Carnival

Carnival

Elizabeth Bear

For Stephen and Asha

BOOK ONE

The Festival of Meat

1

MICHELANGELO OSIRIS LEARY KUSANAGI‑JONES HAD BEEN drinking since fourteen hundred. He didn’t plan on stopping soon.

He occupied a bubbleport on the current observation deck of Kaiwo Maru,where he had been since he started drinking, watching a yellow main‑sequence star grow. The sun had the look of a dancer swirling in veils, a Van Gogh starscape. Eons before, it had blundered into a cloud of interstellar gas and was still devouring the remains. Persistent tatters glowed orange and blue against a backdrop of stars, a vast, doomed display of color and light. Kusanagi‑Jones could glimpse part of the clean‑swept elliptical path that marked the orbit of New Amazonia: a darker streak like a worm tunnel in a leaf.

Breathtaking. Ridiculously named. And his destination. Or rather, theirdestination. Which was why he was drinking, and why he didn’t intend to stop.

As if the destination–and the mission–weren’t bad enough, there was the little issue of Vincent to contend with. Vincent Katherinessen, the Old Earth Colonial Coalition Cabinet’s velvet‑gloved iron hand, far too field‑effective to be categorized as a mere diplomatic envoy no matter how his passport was coded. Vincent, whom Kusanagi‑Jones had managed to avoid for the duration of the voyage by first taking to cryo–damn the nightmares–and then restricting himself to the cramped comforts of his quarters…and whom he could avoid no longer.

Vincent was brilliant, unconventional, almost protean in his thinking. Unless something remarkable had changed, he wore spiky, kinky, sandy‑auburn braids a shade darker than his freckled skin and a shade paler than his light‑catching eyes. He was tall, sarcastic, slender, bird‑handed, generous with smiles as breathtaking as the nebula outside the bubbleport.

And he was the man Michelangelo Kusanagi‑Jones had loved for forty years, although he had not seen him in seventeen–since the lasttime he had betrayed him.

Not that anybody was counting.

Kusanagi‑Jones had anticipated their date by hours, until the gray and white lounge with its gray and white furniture retreated from his awareness like a painted backdrop. If Kusanagi‑Jones captained a starship, he’d license it in reds and golds, vivid prints, anything to combat the black boredom of space.

Another man might have snorted and shaken his head, but Kusanagi‑Jones didn’t quite permit himself a smile of self‑knowledge. He was trying to distract himself, because the liquor wasn’t helping anymore. And in addition to his other qualities, Vincent was also almost pathologically punctual. He should be along any tick–and, in fact, a shadow now moved across Kusanagi‑Jones’s fish‑eye sensor, accompanied by the rasp of shoes on carpet. “Michelangelo.”

Kusanagi‑Jones finished his drink, set the glass in the dispensall, and turned. No, Vincent hadn’t changed. Slightly softer, belly and chin not as tight as in their youth, gray dulling hair he was too proud to have melanized. But in the vigorous middle age of his sixties, Vincent was still–

“Mr. Katherinessen.” Kusanagi‑Jones made his decision and extended his hand, ignoring Vincent’s considering frown. Not a gesture one made to a business associate.

Through the resistance of their wardrobes, fingers brushed. Hands clasped. Vincent hadn’t changed his program either.

They could still touch.

Kusanagi‑Jones had thought he was ready. But if he hadn’t known, he would have thought he’d been jabbed, nano‑infected. He’d have snatched his hand back and checked his readout, hoping his docs could improvise a counteragent.

But it was just chemistry. The reason they’d been separated. The reason they were here, together again, on a starship making port in orbit around a renegade world. Old times,Kusanagi‑Jones thought.

Vincent arched an eyebrow in silent agreement, as if they’d never parted.

“Kill or be killed,” Vincent said, next best thing to a mantra. Kusanagi‑Jones squeezed his fingers and let their hands fall apart, but it didn’t sever the connection. It was too practiced, too reflexive. Vincent’s gift, the empathy, the sympathythat turned them from men into a team. Vincent’s particular gift, complement of Kusanagi‑Jones’s.

Vincent stared at him, tawny eyes bright. Kusanagi‑Jones shrugged and turned his back, running his fingers across the rainbow lights of his subdermal watch to order another martini, codes flickering across neuro‑morphed retinas. He stared out the bubble again, waiting while the drink was mixed, and retrieved it from the dispensall less than a meter away.

“Oh, good.” Vincent’s Earth patois–his com‑pat–was accentless. “Nothing makes a first impression like turning up shitfaced.”

“They think we’re animals anyway.” Kusanagi‑Jones gestured to a crescent world resolving as Kaiwo Maruentered the plane of the ecliptic and began changing to give her passengers the best view. “Not like we had a chance to make them like us. Look, crew’s modulating the ship.”

“Seen one reconfig, seen them all.” Nevertheless, Vincent came up to him and they waited, silent, while Kaiwo Marureworked from a compact shape optimized for travel to something spidery and elegant, designed to dock with the station and transfer cargo–alive and material–as efficiently as possible.

“Behold,” Vincent teased. “New Amazonia.”

Kusanagi‑Jones took a sip of his martini, rolling the welcome rawness over his tongue. “Stupid name for a planet.” He didn’t mind when Vincent didn’t answer.

Bravado aside, Michelangelo did stop drinking with the one in his hand, and Vincent pretended not to notice that he checked his watch and adjusted his blood chemistry. Meanwhile, Kaiwo Marudocked without a shiver. Vincent didn’t even have to put his hand out to steady himself. He pretended, also, that he was looking at the towering curve of the station beyond the bubble, but really, he was watching Michelangelo’s reflection.

There had been times in the last decade and a half when Vincent had been convinced he’d never exactly remember that face. And there had been times when he’d been just as convinced he’d never get it out of his head. That he could feel Michelangelo standing beside him, glowering as he was glowering now.

One wouldn’t discern it casually; Angelo wouldn’t permit that much emotion revealed. His features were broad and solemn, his eyes stern except when bright. He seemed stolid, wary, unassuming–a blocky muscular man whose coloring facilitated his tendency to fade into the shadows. But Vincent felthim glowering, his displeasure like the weight of an angry hand.

Michelangelo glanced at his watch as if contemplating the colored lights. Vincent knew Michelangelo had a heads‑up; he wasn’t checking the time. He was fidgeting.

Fidgeting was new.

“I don’t love you anymore.” Michelangelo pressed his hand to the bubble and then raised it to his mouth.

“I know. I canstill read your mind.”

Michelangelo snorted against the back of his fingers. “I’m a Liar, Vincent. You’ll believe what I want you to believe.”

“How generous.”

“Just true.” Then the irony of his own statement seemed to strike him. He dropped his head and stared at the tips of his shoes as if hypnotized by the rainbows reflected across them. When he glanced back up, Vincent could read laughter in the way the crinkles at the corners of his eyes had deepened.

Vincent chuckled. He touched his watch, keying his wardrobe to something more formal, and stilled momentarily while the program spread and the wardrobe rearranged itself. “Do you wantme, at least? That would make things easier.”

Michelangelo shrugged, impassive. Vincent turned, now watching him frankly, and wondered how much of the attraction was–had always been–that Michelangelo was one of the few people he’d met that he couldn’tread like a fiche.

“They offered me a choice. Therapy or forced retirement.”

Michelangelo’s coloring was too dark for his face to pale, but the blood draining made him ashen. “You took therapy.”

Vincent stifled a vindictive impulse. “I took retirement. I don’t consider my sexuality something that needs to be fixed.”

“Sign of persistent pathology,” Michelangelo said lightly, but his hands trembled.

“So I’ve been told. The funny thing is, they couldn’t make it stick. I didn’t even make it home before I was recalled. Apparently I’m indispensable.”

Michelangelo’s thumb moved across his inner wrist, giving Vincent a sympathetic shiver at the imagined texture of the skin. Another glass appeared in the dispensall, but from the smell, this one was fruit juice.

He sipped the juice and made a face. “I heard.”

Vincent wondered if the license was off. “And you?”

“Not as indispensable as Vincent Katherinessen.” He put the glass back and watched as it recycled: the drink vaporizing, the glass fogging. A waste of energy; Vincent controlled the urge to lecture. If they got what they needed on New Amazonia, it wouldn’t be an issue–and anyway, they were on a starship, the one place in the entire OECC where conserving energy wasn’t a civic duty as mandated as community service. “I took the therapy.”

Vincent swallowed, wishing he could taste something other than the tang of atomizing juice. He picked a nonexistent bit of lint off his sleeve. “Oh.”

Michelangelo lifted his chin, turned, and gave Vincent a smile warm enough to melt his implants. He glanced over his shoulder, as if ascertaining the lounge was empty, then leaned forward, slid both hands up Vincent’s neck, and pulled Vincent’s head down to plant a wet, tender kiss on his lips.

It’s a lie,Vincent told himself, as his breath shortened and his body responded. Michelangelo was substantial, all muscle under the draped knits his wardrobe counterfeited. They both knew he controlled Vincent the instant Vincent let him close.

Just as Vincent knew Michelangelo’s apparent abandonment to the kiss was probably as counterfeit as his “hand‑knitted” sweater. It’s a lie. He took the therapy. It didn’t help. His body believed; his intuition trusted; the partnership breathed into the kiss and breathed out again. Sparkles of sensation followed Michelangelo’s hands as they cupped Vincent’s skull and stroked his nape. He knewMichelangelo wanted him, as he had always known. As Michelangelo had always permittedhim to know.

He wondered what the ship’s Governors made of the kiss, whether they had been instructed to turn a blind eye on whatever illegalities proceeded between the diplomat and his attachй. Or if their interaction had been logged and would be reported to the appropriate agencies within the Colonial Coalition when Kaiwo Marudispatched a packet bot.

The relationship between the Cabinet and the Governors was complex; the Cabinet did not carry out death sentences, and the Governors did not answer to the Cabinet. But after the Great Cull, they had begun performing some of their Assessments in accordance with planetary laws. There was dйtente; an alliance, of sorts, by which the Cabinet maintained control and the Governors, with their own inhuman logic and society, supported an administration that maintained ecological balance.

Once, there had been many governments on Old Earth. Industrialized nation‑states and alliances had used more than their share of resources and produced more than their share of waste. But Assessment had ended that, along with human life in the Northern Hemisphere. In the wake of an apocalypse, people often become reactionary, and the survivors of Assessment were disproportionately Muslim and Catholic. And in a society where being granted permission to reproduce was idealized–even fetishized–where every survivor meant that someone else had notlived…those who were different were not welcome.

Over a period of decades, in the face of necessity, resistance to the widespread use of reproductive technology and genetic surgery waned. The Governors did not care about the morality of the human‑made laws they enforced. Or their irony either.

So, throughout Coalition space, that kiss was the overture to a capital case. But just this once, its illegality didn’t matter. That particular illegality was why they were here.

Michelangelo leaned back, but his breath stayed warm on Vincent’s cheek, and Vincent didn’t pull away. “They’ll just separate us again when this is over.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. We were useful to them once.”

“Politics were different then.”

“The politics are different now, too.”

Michelangelo disengaged, stepped back, and turned away. “Can’t honestly think we will be allowed within three systems of each other. After New Earth”–Michelangelo’s weight shifted, a guilty tell Vincent could have wasted half a day on if he’d been in the mood to try to figure out how much of what Michelangelo gave him was real–“we’re lucky the Cabinet thought us useful enough to keep alive.”

By Michelangelo’s standards, it was a speech. Vincent stood blinking for a moment, wondering what else had changed. And then he thought about therapy, and the chip concealed in–but isolated from–his wardrobe. Don’t love you anymore.

That would make things easier, wouldn’t it?

“If we pull this off”–Vincent folded his hands behind his head–“The Cabinet won’t deny us much. We could retire on it. I could finally introduce you to my mother.”

A snort, but Michelangelo turned and leaned against the bubble, folding his arms. “If we don’t wind up Assessed.”

Vincent grinned, and Michelangelo grinned back reluctantly. The sour, sharp note in Michelangelo’s voice was a homecoming. “If we bring home justthe technology we’re to negotiate for–”

“Assuming it is either portable or reproducible?”

“–we’re unlikely to find ourselves surplused. I know what a cheap, clean energy source will mean to the Captaincy on Ur. And to appeasing the Governors. What will it mean on Old Earth?”

Michelangelo had that expression, the knitted brow and set muscle in his jaw that meant he agreed with Vincent and wasn’t happy about it. He had to be thinking about Old Earth’s tightly managed population of fifty million, about biodiversity and environmental load and Assessment. Culling.

“On Earth?” Michelangelo would never call it Old Earth,unless speaking to someone who wouldn’t know what he meant otherwise. “Might mean no culls for fifty, a hundred years.”

“That would pay for a lot.” Michelangelo could do the math. Nonpolluting power meant that a larger population could be supported before triggering the Governors’ inexorable logic.

The Governors did not argue. They simply followed the programs of the radical environmentalists who had unleashed them, and reduced the load.

Assessments were typically small now. Nothing like the near‑extermination of the years surrounding Diaspora, because Old Earth’s population had remained relatively stable since nine and a half billion citizens had been reduced to organic compounds, their remains used to reclaim exhausted farmland, reinvigorate desertified grassland, enrich soil laid over the hulks of emptied cities–or simply sealed up in long‑abandoned coal mines and oil wells.

Michelangelo’s nod was curt, and slow in coming. Vincent wondered if he’d been mistaken in pushing for it, but then Michelangelo made him a little present of the smile they both knew tangled Vincent’s breath around his heart. “And if we manage to overthrow their government, steal or destroy their tech, and get a picture of their prime minister in bed with a sheep in bondage gear?”

A heartbeat, but Vincent didn’t even try to keep the relief off his face. “They’ll probably give you another medal you’re not allowed to take home.”

Michelangelo’s laugh might have been mistaken for choking. He shook his head when he stopped, and waved a hand out the bubble at the light over the docking bay, on Boadicca Station’s side. “Light’s green. Let’s catch our bus.”

Pretoria household’s residence was already bannered and flowered and gilded to excess when Lesa arrived home, but that wasn’t limiting the ongoing application of gaud. The street‑level entrance opened onto a wide veranda, and one of Pretoria household’s foremothers had wheedled House into growing a long, filigreed lattice from floor to roof around it. It was a pleasant, airy screen that normally created a sense of privacy without disrupting sight lines, but currently it was burdened with enough garland to drift scent for blocks, without considering the sticks of incense thrust in among the flowers. Those would be lit two evenings hence. In the meantime, misted water would keep the blooms fresh.

Lesa climbed the steps along with the household male who’d accompanied her on her errand. Xavier carried a dozen bottles of wine in a divided wicker holder slung over his shoulder. He was a steady, careful sort; they didn’t clink.

Lesa herself had two bags–the pick of fresh fruit and vegetables from the morning’s markets–and two live chickens in a flat‑bottomed sack, slumbering through their last hours in artificial darkness. It paid to get there early, especially near Carnival, and Elena wouldn’t trust the males or the servants with anything as important as buying for a holiday meal.

Besides, they were all busy decorating.

Katya, Lesa’s surviving daughter, supervised the activity on the veranda, her glossy black hair braided off her neck, unhatted in the sun. “Melanoma,” Lesa said, kissing her on the back of the head as she went by.

Katya was fifteen Amazonian years–twenty‑odd, in standard conversion–and impatient with anything that smacked of responsible adulthood. And she wouldn’t wear her honor around the house; her hip was naked even of a holster. Of course, Lesa–both hands full of groceries, unable to reach her honor without dropping chickens or fruit–wasn’t much of an example, whatever her renown as a duelist twenty years and three children ago.

Katya blew her fringe out of her eyes. “Sunblock.” She rubbed Lesa’s cheek with a greasy finger. “Hats are too hot.”

“On the contrary,” Lesa said. “Hats are supposed to keep you cool.” But it was like arguing with a fexa; the girl just gave her an inscrutable look and went back to braiding a gardeneid garland, the sweet juice from the crushed stems slicking her fingers. “Want help?”

“Love it,” Katya said, “but Claude’s in there. The Coalition ship made orbit overnight. You’re on.”

“They got here for Carnival? Typical male timing.” Lesa stretched under her load.

“See you at dinner.” Katya ducked from under her lapful of flowers and turned so she could lean forward mockingly to kiss the ring her mother wore on the hand that was currently occupied by the sack of chickens.

Inside the door, Lesa passed the groceries to one of the household staff and sent her off with Xavier once he’d kicked his sandals at the catchall. Lesa balanced on each foot in turn and unzipped her boots before hanging them on the caddy. In Penthesilea’s equatorial heat, all sorts of unpleasant things grew in unaired shoes.

She dug her toes into the cool carpetplant with a sigh of relief and hung up her hat, grateful to House for taking the edge off the sun. Claude and Elena would be in the morning room at breakfast, which was still being served. Lesa’s stomach rumbled at the smell as she walked through seashell rooms and down an arched corridor, enjoying the aviform song House brought in from the jungle along with filtered light.

Elena Pretoria was exactly where Lesa had imagined her, on the back veranda with her long hands spread on the arms of a rattan chair–real furniture, not provided by House–her silver‑streaked hair stripped into a tail and her skin glowing dark gold against white lounging clothes. For all the air of comfort and grace she projected, however, Lesa noticed the white leather of her holster slung on her waist and buckled down to her thigh. Elena had a past as a duelist, too, and as a politician. And she wasn’t about to let Claude Singapore forget it, even if Claude’s position as prime minister was enough rank to let her enter another woman’s household without surrendering her honor.

Claude was tall and bony, a beautiful woman with blunt‑cut hair that had been white as feathers since she was in her twenties, and some of the lightest eyes Lesa had ever seen–which perhaps explained the depth of the crow’s‑feet decorating her face. They couldn’t all be from smiling, though Lesa wasn’t sure she’d ever seen Claude notsmiling. She had an arsenal of smiles, including a melancholy one for funerals.

“Lesa,” Claude said, as Lesa greeted her mother with a little bow. “I’m here–”

“I heard. The grapevine’s a light‑minute ahead.”

Claude stood up anyway, extending her hand. Lesa took it. Claude had a politician’s handshake, firm but gentle. “I don’t know why we even have media on this planet.”

“It gives us someone to blame for scandals,” Lesa answered, and Claude laughed even though it hadn’t been funny. “I’m ready. When will they make landfall?”

“Tomorrow. We’re shuttling them down. You’ll come by this evening for a briefing?”

“Of course,” Lesa said. “Dinnertime?”

“Good for me.”

Claude stepped away from her chair, and Elena took it as a cue to stand. “Leaving us already?”

“The Republic never sleeps. And I can hear Lesa’s stomach rumbling from here. I imagine she’d enjoy a quiet breakfast with her family before the madness begins.”

“Claude, I don’t mean to chase you out of your chair,” Lesa said, but Claude was turning to shake Elena’s hand.

“Nonsense.” Claude stepped back, and adjusted her holster. It was a Y‑style, and they had a tendency to pinch when one stood. “I’ll see you tonight. I can show myself out–”

“Good‑bye.” Lesa did walk a few steps toward the door with the guest, so as not to give offense. When Claude was safely gone, she tilted her head at Elena. “Why did she come herself?”

“Probably a subtle message not to try anything tricky. She hasn’t forgiven me for getting her wife ousted from the Export Board, and she still thinks the Coalition can be appeased.” The twist of her mouth revealed what she thought of that idea. It made Lesa restrain a smile: it was also Katya’s moue, and Lesa’s son Julian made the same face when he was concentrating.

Lesa used that image of Julian to keep her voice under control. “As soon as they have what they want, the Coalition will scorch us off the surface. They’re distracting us while they set up the kill.”

“They’d have to justify the ecological damage from an orbital attack to the Governors, and that would be…hard to get approval for, I imagine. They might convince the Governors that we need to be Assessed, however, and brought under control. We’d fight.”

Lesa caught the glint of Elena’s smile. “You heard from Katherine Lexasdaughter.”

“Coded. A packet concealed in the Kaiwo Maru’s logburst as she made orbit.”

Lesa could imagine the resources required to arrange for treason and insurrection to be transmitted in a ship’s identification codes on a governed channel. Katherine was head of the Captain’s Council on Ur, and held a chair in the Colonial Cabinet on the strength of it.

“He’s coming.” Lesa’s chest lightened and tightened both at once. Elena might think she was the saltspider at the center of the web, but Lesa couldn’t allow her to recognize all the layers of machinations here. Elena was not going to be happy with Lesa when things shook out.

Elena’s smile was tight with guarded triumph. “I hate hanging our hopes on a man, even if he is both gentle andhis mother’s son. But he came.”

2

BOADICCA WASN’T THE LEAST CIVILIZED STATION Kusanagi‑Jones had seen, but its status as a cargo transfer point rather than a passenger terminal was evident. New Amazonia’s trade was with other Diaspora worlds, a ragtag disorganization of colonies beyond the reach of Coalition growth–for now, anyway. (Kusanagi‑Jones occasionally wondered if the Governors’ long‑dead progenitors had understood that in their creation, they had delivered unto Earth’s survivors a powerful impetus to expansion.)

Boadicca reflected that isolation. The curved passageways were devoid of decoration, creature comforts, carpeting, kiosks, and shops. The only color was vivid stripes of contack, which scanned the watches of nearby pedestrians to provide helpful arrows and schematics. Kusanagi‑Jones paused to study the patterns, and frowned. “Security risk,” he said, when Vincent looked a question. “Too easy for a third party to match up destination with traveler. Must be short on saboteurs and terrorists here.”

Vincent smiled, and Kusanagi‑Jones read the comment in the air between them. Not anymore.

“Good old Earth,” Kusanagi‑Jones agreed, lapsing out of common‑pat and into a language that wasn’t taught in any school. “If you can’t bring it home, blow it up.”

Secrets within secrets, the way the game was always played. If they couldn’t find a way to bring New Amazonia under OECC hegemony with at least the pretense of consent–the way Vincent’s homeworld Ur had fallen–they would weaken the local government through any means necessary, until the colonials came crawling to Earth for help.

Colonies were fragile, short on population and resources. On Ur, for example, there had been the issue of sustainable agriculture, of a limited gene pool further damaged by the exigencies of long‑distance space travel, of the need for trade and communication with other worlds. Where Ur maintained a pretense of sovereignty and had significant representation on the OECC’s Cabinet, successful sabotage leading to a failure of strength would result in a worse outcome for New Amazonia in the long run. And if Vincent and Kusanagi‑Jones did their jobs as ordered, that was the plan, just as it had been on New Earth.

And just as on New Earth, Kusanagi‑Jones didn’t intend to allow the plan to come to fruition. He also wasn’t foolish enough to think that a second act of self‑sabotage would evade his superiors’ notice.

Vincent defocused as he checked his watch. “I’d kill for a coffee. But our luggage is on the lighter.”

“I hope it was well packed.” Luggagewas an inadequate term; the cargo pod that Vincent had shepherded all the way from Earth under diplomatic seal carried what their documents euphemistically identified as samples. Those samples included, among other objects, Fionha Dubhai’s holographic sculpture Ice Ageand an original pastel by the Impressionist Berthe Morisot. Irreplaceabledidn’t even begin to cover it. And bargaining chipwas only the beginning of the story. There was more back on Earth; this shipment was only to prove goodwill–to show willing, as Vincent would say. Whatever their history, the OECC wasn’t stinting on the tools to do its job, either by bargaining or by blowing things up.

Vincent put a hand on Kusanagi‑Jones’s elbow as they drew up before a loading bay, one identical among many. Two green lights blinking beside the archway indicated their destination. “This is the end of the line.”

“You said it.” They walked forward, side by side, to link their documents into the lighter’s system so the pilot could tell them where to go.

The long New Amazonian day was inconvenient for creatures whose biorhythms were geared toward a twenty‑four‑hour cycle. Lag became a problem in more temperate climes, but Penthesilea was fortunate in that high heat provided a supremely adequate excuse for a midafternoon siesta. During more than two‑thirds of the year, it was followed by the afternoon rains, which signaled the city’s reawakening for the evening round of business.

Lesa cheated and let Julian stay with her while she napped. Walter, the big khir that usually slept in her rooms, was nowhere in evidence–probably off with Katya–and Julian at six and a half local years was of the age when naps were an abomination before the god of men. He sat up at Lesa’s terminal while she flopped across the bed and closed her eyes. She’d seen the problem he was working. He said it was a minor modification of House’s program, though Lesa didn’t have the skills to even read it, let alone solve it, but Julian was so thoroughly engaged that she let him keep tapping away as she dozed, lulled by the ticking of the interface.

That sound blended into the patter of the rain on her balcony so that she didn’t rouse until House pinged her. She opened her eyes on yellow walls shifting with violent sunlight–entirely unlike the gray skies outside–and winced. “House, dial it down, please.”

The light dimmed, the walls and ceiling filling with the images of wind‑rustled leaves and vines. She stretched and rubbed her eyes. “Hello, Mom,” Julian said without looking up from the monitors. “Did you sleep well?”

She rubbed at her eyes and padded across the carpetplant to the wardrobe. “Too well,” she said. “I’m late. Save your work, Julian, and go eat.”

“Mom–”

She paused, a fistful of patterned sylk drawn out into the light, and turned to stare at the back of his head. “You know you can’t stay down here while I’m gone.”

His shoulders drooped, but his hand passed quickly over the save light, and he powered the terminal down before sliding, monkeylike, out of the chair. It was a little too tall for him, so he had hooked his toes over a brace while he worked, and the disentangling turned him into a study in conflicted angles. “All right,” he said, and came to hug her before vanishing through the door, gone before it had entirely irised open.

Lesa dressed for business in the warmth of the evening; the rain would be over before she left. She chose a tailored wrap skirt and the sylk blouse, and belted her honor over the skirt. Claude could take offense at anything, even if Lesa were of a mind to show up anywhere public unarmed. And the skirt would be cool enough; she couldn’t face trousers after the rain, with the hottest part of the year beginning.

Downstairs, she passed Xavier in the foyer, coming in from the decorating. Lesa had taken her own turn earlier in the day. At least it was better than pulling the flowers down, which was the part she truly hated.

She told House she was leaving, and asked it to summon a car. The vehicle was waiting by the time she reached the end of the alley that fronted Pretoria house; a diplomatic groundcar with a male driver, his street license prominently displayed on his shoulder–marking a gentle male, rather than a stud like Xavier. He smiled as she slid in. “Government center?”

“Singapore house,” she said. “I have a dinner invitation.”

He drove carefully, politely, through the rain‑flooded streets. Water peeled away under the groundcar’s tires on long plumes, but the only people outside during cloudover were one or two employed stud males with street licenses hurrying back to their households or dormitories for dinner, and the householders on their porches under umbrella‑covered tables, sipping drinks and enjoying the brief cooling.

The household Claude Singapore shared with her wife, Maiju Montevideo, was on the seaward side of the city, overlooking the broad, smooth bay. By the time Lesa arrived, the clouds had peeled back from the tops of Penthesilea’s storied towers. The rays of the westering sun penetrated, sparking color off the ocean, brightening it from gray to the usual ideal blue.

Lesa Pretoria was not Claude Singapore, and her own rank as a deputy chief of Security Directorate did not entitle her to carry her honor inside another woman’s house. She paused at the top of the steps to Singapore house’s door and surrendered it to the woman who waited there, along with her boots. Both were hung neatly on a rack, and Lesa smiled a thanks. There was a male servant present, too, but he could not touch firearms.

She must come armed, to show her willingness to use her strength in defense of Pretoria household’s alliance with Singapore, and she must be willing to lay that strength aside to meet with Claude. There were forms, and to ignore them was to give offense.

Lesa wasn’t particularly concerned about offending, however prickly Claude might be. Lesa could outduel her. But it was also polite. She gave the male servant her overcoat and followed the woman inside.

Although the rains were barely breaking, Lesa was the last to arrive. Claude and Maiju and the other guests were gathered around a table under a pavilion in the courtyard, sitting on low carpet‑covered stools to keep the dampness off their clothes.

In addition to the prime minister, there was Miss Ouagadougou, the art expert who would be working directly with the Coalition diplomat. She was joined by her male confidential secretary, Stefan–a striking near‑blond, almost unscarred, though Lesa knew he’d had a reputation during his time in the Trials. Beside them sat Lesa’s superior, Elder Kyoto, the head of Security Directorate.

Claude stood as Lesa emerged from the passageway, disentangling her long legs from the bench, and ushered Lesa to a seat–one strategically between Maiju and Stefan, Lesa noticed with a grin. Maiju was separatist; she’d as soon see all the males–stud andgentle–on New Amazonia culled down to the bare minimum and confined to a gulag. Or better yet, the widespread acceptance of reproductive gene splicing.

It would take a revolution to make that happen. Lesa wasn’t the only Penthesilean woman who honestly enjoyed the company–and the physical affection–of males. And artificial insemination and genetic tampering were banned under the New Amazonian constitution. On Old Earth, before the Diaspora, there had been extensive genetic research, and it had led to the birth of people who would be considered abominations in Lesa’s culture. Human clones, genetically manipulated people–their descendents might still be alive on Old Earth today.

One of the representatives the Coalition Cabinet was sending was an Old Earth native. Lesa tried not to think too much about that, about what could be lurking in his ancestry.

Maiju was a radical. But her wife was prime minister, and so she kept her opinions to herself.

“Good evening, Elder Montevideo, Elder Kyoto, Stefan,” Lesa said, as she helped herself to a glossleaf to use as a plate. The dining was informal, and Stefan served her without being asked, graciously playing host.

The dark green leaf curled up at the edges, a convenient lip to pinch her food against. She was hungrier than she had realized, and once Claude resumed her place and began eating, Lesa joined in, rinsing her fingers in the bowl of water by her place to keep them from growing sticky with the sauce. The wine was served in short‑stemmed cups, and she kept her left hand dry for drinking with.

At a more formal meal there would have been utensils, but this was family style, intended to inform those assembled that they might speak freely and conduct business with candor. Nevertheless, Lesa waited until Claude pushed her glossleaf away before she spoke. “Tell me about the delegates,” she said.

“You know the senior diplomat is Vincent Katherinessen, the son of the Captain of Ur.”

“Reclaimed peacefully by the Old Earth Colonial Coalition some fifty‑seven standard years ago,” Lesa said, “and, though there are Governors on‑planet, generally granted unprecedented freedoms by the Cabinet because they keep their own population down, accept Old Earth immigrants, and practice a religion that encourages ecological responsibility. Katherinessen is a superperceiver, which is why he’ll be my especial problem.”

“Yes,” Claude said. “We requested him. He’s the only admitted gentle male in the Coalition’s diplomatic service. There was a scandal–”

“Something on New Earth, wasn’t it?”

Stefan stood as the women talked and began whisking used glossleafs off the table, piling them to one side for the convenience of the service staff. Meanwhile, Maiju did them all the honor of serving the sweet, an herb‑flavored ice presented in capacious bowls, with fluted spoons, and accompanied by real shade‑grown Old Earth coffee–a shrub that flourished in the New Amazonian climate.

“A Coalition warship, the Skidbladnir,was destroyed by sabotage during a diplomatic mission headed by Katherinessen. The lack of military assets allowed New Earth to walk away with its sovereignty intact. Another mission was sent, but by the time it arrived, New Earth had managed to scramble enough of a military operation to make the cost of retaking the world excessive, and the Governors would not permit a full‑scale use of force because of the ecological impact. New Earth is marginally habitable at best–it’s cold and has a low oxygen rating and not a lot of water, which made it a poor investment from the Governors’ point of view, as they will not permit Terraforming. During the investigation it came out that Katherinessen had what they would call an improper relationship with his attachй.” Claude’s habitual smile drifted wider as her left hand crept out to take Maiju’s possessively. “I don’t know why they weren’t culled for the…‘crime.’”

“And here he is,” Lesa said, and then slipped her spoon into her mouth and let the ice melt over her tongue, spreading flavors that shimmered and changed as it warmed.

“Guess who they sent along with him?”

Lesa’s spoon clicked on the bowl. “The attachй?”

“Amusing, isn’t it?” Claude steepled her fingers behind her untouched dessert. “They seem to have taken us at our word when we said we would only accept women, or gentle males.”

Lesa shook her head, and drank two swallows of scalding coffee too rapidly, to clear her palate before she spoke. “It’s got to be a trick.”

“Of course it is,” Claude said. “No smart woman would expect the Coalition to deal in goodwill.”

“We’re not either,” Miss Ouagadougou said, who had been so quiet. “We can’t give them what they’re trading for. It’s unexportable.”

“Don’t worry,” Claude said. “We have that covered. We’re not going to give them anything at all. Anything they want, in any case.”

The meeting continued long past midnight. Afterward, Lesa returned home, changed clothes, and rode the lift almost to the top of the towering spire of Pretoria house. She slipped past Agnes and into the Blue Rooms, saying she was going to check on Julian. She stopped, though, and crossed to the outside wall, where she climbed into an archway and watched the snarled sky turn toward sunrise. Lesa’s hair was tangled, leached to streaked black and gray in the nebula‑light. The Gorgon stretched overhead, a frail twist of color like watered silk, far too permeable a barrier to hold anything at bay for long. Pinprick glows slid against it, red and green, and she wondered if the cargo lighter descending across the dying nebula carried the Colonial diplomats.

Lesa hugged herself despite her nightshirt sticking to her skin, despite the jungle beyond the city walls still steaming from afternoon rains. It wasn’t safe to stand here half clothed, her honor left with Agnes outside and nothing between her and a messy death except her reflexes and a half‑kilometer of space.

But she needed the air, and she needed the warmth. And she could hear the stud males sleeping, their snores and soft breath soothing enough that she almost thought about lying down to sleep beside them. Her mother would have her hide for a holster in the morning, of course, but it might be worth it. Elena Pretoria was almost sixty; she was still sharp and stubborn and undeniably in charge, but Lesa was more than capable of giving her a challenge, and they both knew it.

And the men knew which member of the household looked out for them, and they knew there were gentles and armed women beyond the door. Some women were frightened of men–hopelessly old‑fashioned, in Lesa’s estimation. Stud males might be emotional, temperamental, and developmentally stunted, at the mercy of their androgens, but that didn’t make them incapable of generosity, friendship, cleverness, or creativity.

It wasn’t their fault that they weren’t women. And Lesa knew better than to provoke them, anyway. Like any animal–like the house khir that had been Lesa’s responsibility before Katya took over–they could be managed. Even befriended. They simply demanded caution and respect.

Which was something many women were not willing to offer to stud males, or even gentle ones, but Lesa found she preferred their honesty to the politics of women. An eccentricity–but that eccentricity was one reason why she would be the one to meet the Colonials when they came.

The reason besides Katherinessen. She was looking forward to that. She stroked the archway and felt House shiver its pleasure at the touch.

Some people couldn’t sense the city’s awareness of their presence and its affection. Lesa found it comforting. Especially as she considered the thorniness of the problem she faced.

Her mother believed in the process. No matter what, no matter how much wrangling went on between Elena and Claude, Elena believed in the process. In the New Amazonian philosophy.

And Lesa no longer did.

She stepped back. The wall stayed open and a warm breeze chased her, bringing jungle scents and the calls of a night‑flyer. She’d worry about the Colonials tomorrow. Tonight, she picked her way past the sleeping men, brushing a finger across her lips when her favorite, Robert, lifted his head from his arm and watched her go by. He winked; she smiled.

The boys’ quarters were at the back of the Blue Rooms. She pushed past the curtain and held her palm to the sensor so House could recognize her and let her pass. The boys slept even more soundly than the men.

None of them woke. Not even Julian, when she climbed over him and the yearling khir curled against his chest, slid between his body and the wall, and pushed her face into his hair as if she could breathe his rag‑doll relaxation into her bones.

Timeslip. Cold currents on unreal skin. The flesh‑adapted brain interprets this as air on scales, air tickling feathers.

Kii had wings once. Eyes, fingers, tongue. No more. Now, Kii watches the aliens through ghost‑eyes, tastes their heat and scents and sounds through ghost‑organs. No skin‑brush, tongue‑flicker, swing of muzzle to inhale warmth through labial pits.

The aliens are that. Alien. Unscaled, unfeathered. Tool users with their soft polydactyl hands. They totter on legs, bipedal, hair patchy as if with parasites. But after Kii has seen a few, Kii understands they are supposed to look that way.

Sudden creatures, and so strange, with their hierarchies and their false Consent that leaves them unhappy, untribed.

But they know combat for honor, and the care of young, and they keep the khir. And they know art for its own sake.

They areesthelich, cognizant of order. And that is new.

The ghost‑others think Kii’s fascination strange. But Kii is explorer‑caste, a few still remaining–still needed even among the ghosts–and Kii is not content with experiment, manipulation, analysis. The others may engage with cosmoclines, programming, reordering the infrastructure of their vast and artificial universe. They may manipulate wormholes, link branes, enhance control. They have mistressed power enough to manufacture entire branes–objects similar to a naturally occurring four‑dimensional universe–and learned finesse enough to program them. They have aspired to leave their shells and embrace immortality.

Nothing they are or desire cannot be made or remade on a whim. They are beyond challenge. They no longer evolve.

And yet Kii watches the alien curl around its cub as the cub curls around the khir, and Kii sees something new. Perhaps Kii is in need of a programming adjustment, but it is not violating Consent to wonder.

And things that are new are things that Kii’s caste is for.

On fourteen worlds, Vincent Katherinessen had never seen a city like Penthesilea.

The limousine they’d transferred into after the lighter’s splashdown came in low, skimming over the wind‑ruffled bay and the densely verdant forests that grew against the seashell walls of the ancient, alien city. The pilot was giving the emissaries the view; she brought the craft up on an arcing spiral that showed off three sides of the skyline.

Vincent leaned against the window shamelessly and stared. The structures–if they wereindividual structures, given how they flowed and merged together, like tall colonies of some sea animal with calcified exoskeletons–were earth‑shades and jewel‑shades, reflecting a dark oily iridescence like black opal or treated titanium. Vincent wondered if they were solar. The colors were suggestive, but could be decorative–though he couldn’t think of a human culture that would choose that color scheme or the chaotic, almost fractal architecture that put him in mind of something arranged by colony insects, Ur‑hornets or Old Earth termites.

No one really knew. As the OECC had reconstructed from its incomplete access to New Amazonian records, Penthesilea looked more or less as it had when the New Amazonians arrived–the only evidence of nonhuman intelligence that had been found on any explored world. There were four other cities, each miraculously undamaged and thrumming after centuries of abandonment, each apparently designed by an intelligence with little physical resemblance to humans. And each cheerfully polymorphous and ready to adapt to the needs of new occupants who, in the hard, early days of the colony, had determined convenient shelter to be the better part of caution, and who had not been proven wrong in the decades since. Arguments about their nature and design possessed the OECC scientific community and proved largely masturbatory. New Amazonia wasn’t about to allow a team in to research their construction, their design, their archaeology, or–most interesting of all to the OECC–their apparently clean and limitless power source.

So Vincent and Michelangelo were here to steal it. And if they couldn’t steal it–

There were always fallback options.

Vincent glanced at his partner. Michelangelo sat passive, inward‑turned, as if he were reading something on his heads‑up. He wasn’t; he was aware, observing, thinking, albeit in that state where he seemed to have become just another fixture. Vincent nudged him–not physically, exactly, more a pressure of his attention–and Michelangelo turned and cleared his throat.

Vincent gestured to the window. “Change your clothes. It’s time to go to work.”

Michelangelo ran fingers across his watch without looking, and stilled for a moment as the foglets in his wardrobe arranged themselves into a mandarin‑collared suit of more conservative cut than Vincent’s, ivory and ghost‑silver, a staid complement to Vincent’s eye‑catching colors. “Kill or be killed,” he murmured, his mouth barely shaping the words so neither the pilot nor the limousine would hear them.

Vincent smiled. That’s what I’m afraid of.

Michelangelo nodded, curtly, as though he had spoken.

The first thing Kusanagi‑Jones noticed as he stepped down from the limousine was that the pavement wasn’t exactly pavement. The second thing was that there were no plants, no flowers except the freshly dead garlands twined with ribbon or contack that hung from every facade. No landscaping, no songbirds–or the New Amazonian equivalent–just the seemingly wind‑sculpted architecture, buildings like pueblos and weathered sandstone spires and wind‑pocked cliff faces. He stood, tropical humidity prickling sweat across his brow, and arched his neck back to look up at the legendary Haunted City of New Amazonia.

He didn’t see any ghosts.

He’d done his threat assessment before the door of the limousine ever glided open, and he reconsidered it now, as his wardrobe wicked sweat off his skin so quickly he barely felt damp and his toiletries combated the frizz springing up in his hair. He blocked the door of the limousine, covering Vincent with his body, and turned like a shadow across a sundial to scan roofs and the assembled women with his naked eyes and an assortment of augments.

The Penthesilean security forces stood about where he would have stationed them, and that was good. It was good also that the women in the greeting party stayed back and let him make sure of the surroundings rather than rushing in. He hated crowds.

Especially when he was with Vincent.

He moved away, and a moment later Vincent stood beside him. Kusanagi‑Jones’s skin prickled, but there was nothing but the dark opalescent somethingunder his feet, the punishing equatorial sun, and the three women who detached themselves from the dignitaries and started forward. The one in the middle was the important one; older, with what Kusanagi‑Jones identified–with a bit of wonder–as sun‑creases decorating the edges of long black eyes distinguished by epicanthic folds. Her hair was straight and shoulder length, undercut, the top layer dyed in stained‑glass colors, shifting to reveal glossy black. She wore dark vibrant red, what Kusanagi‑Jones thought was a real cloth suit–a blatant display of consumption.

The two behind her were security, he thought; broad‑shouldered young women in dark plain wardrobes or clothing, with the glow of animal health and stern expressions calculated to give nothing away. All three of them were openly armed.

Kusanagi‑Jones knew how to use a sidearm. He’d received training in allthe illegal arts, although he’d never been a soldier. And he’d been on planets raw enough that citizens were still issued permits for long weapons. But he’d never been in the presence of people–especially women–who wore their warcraft on their sleeves.

He wondered if they could shoot.

It made him unhappy, but he stepped to one side and allowed Vincent to take point. The older woman stepped forward, too. “I’m Lesa Pretoria,” she said in accented com‑pat, tendering a hand.

Vincent reached to take it as if touching strangers were something he did every day. He shook it while Kusanagi‑Jones hurried to adjust his filters so he could follow suit. “Vincent Katherinessen.”

“That’s not a Coalition name,” Miss Pretoria said.

“I was born on Ur, a repatriated world. This is my partner, Michelangelo Osiris Leary Kusanagi‑Jones. He isfrom Old Earth.”

“Ah.” A world of complexity in that syllable. Vincent had answered in nearly flawless New Amazonian argot, which owed less to Spanish and Arabic and more to Afrikaans than com‑pat did. She extended her hand to Kusanagi‑Jones. “I’ll be your guide and interpreter.”

Warden,Kusanagi‑Jones translated, taking her hand and bowing over it, painfully aware of her consideration as his wardrobe considered her and let them touch. “The fox.”

She blinked at him, reclaiming her appendage. “Beg pardon?”

“Lesa,” he said. “Means the fox.”

Her lips quirked. “What’s a fox, Miss Kusanagi‑Jones?”

The Amazonian patois had no honorific for unmarried men, and his status here was at least diplomatically speaking better than that of a Mister. So being called Missrelaxed him, although he caught Vincent’s sharp amusement, an undertone flavored with mockery.

Just another mission, just another foreign land. Just another alien culture to be navigated with tact. He smiled at Vincent past Miss Pretoria’s shoulder and bowed deeper before he straightened. “An Old Earth animal. Beautiful. Very clever.”

“Like what we call a fexa,then? A hunting omnivore?” she continued as he nodded. “All gone now, I suppose?”

“Not at all. Seven hundred and fourteen genotypes preserved, of four species or subspecies. Breeding nicely on reintroduction.” He gave her a substandard copy of Vincent’s smile number seven, charming but not sexually threatening. “Featured in legends of Asia, Europe, and North America.”

“Fascinating,” she said, but she obviously had absolutely no idea where those places were, and less interest in their history. “Those are nations?”

“Continents,” he said, and left it at that, before Vincent’s mirth could bubble the hide off his bones like lye. He stepped back, and Miss Pretoria moved to fill the space as smoothly as if he’d gestured her into it–no hesitation, no double‑checking. They fell into step, Vincent flanking Pretoria and himself flanking Vincent, her security detail a weighty absence on either side: alert, dangerous, and imperturbable. Pretoria ignored them like her breath.

Kusanagi‑Jones caught Vincent’s eye as they headed for the reception line. Your reputation precedes you, Vincent. She’s like you.Neither an empath nor a telepath; nothing so esoteric. Just somebody born with a greater than usual gift for interpreting body language, spotting a lie, a misdirection, an unexpected truth.

A superperceiver: that was the technical term used in the programs they’d been selected for as students, where Michelangelo was classified as controlled kinesthetic,but the few with the clearance to know his gift called him a Liar.

He almost heard Vincent sigh in answer. Irritation: do something, Angelo.Not words, of course–just knowing what Vincent wouldhave said.

Kusanagi‑Jones took his cue as they entered the receiving line and tried for a conversation with Miss Pretoria between the archaic handshakes and watch‑assisted memorization of each name and rank. He knew as soon as he thought it that he shouldn’t say it, but it was his job to be the brash one, Vincent’s to play the diplomat.

He leaned over and murmured in Miss Pretoria’s ear, “How does a planet come to be called New Amazonia?”

Her lip curled off a smile more wolf than fox. “Miss Kusanagi‑Jones,” she said, the dryness informing her voice the first evidence of personality she’d shown, “surely you don’t think we’re entirelywithout a sense of humor.”

He shook another stranger’s hand over murmured pleasantries. There was a rhythm to it, and it wasn’t unpleasant, once you got the hang of it. The New Amazonians had firm grips, sweaty with the scorching heat. He wished he’d worn a hat, as most of the women had.

He decided to risk it. “I admit to having worried–”

She didn’t laugh, but her lip flickered up at the corner, as if she almostthought it was funny. “You’ll be pleasantly surprised, I think. You’re just in time for Carnival.”

3

THEY HAD NOT BEEN LIED TO. THE MEN WERE GENTLE; when one leaned, moved, spoke, the other one mirrored. She sensed it in the energy between them, their calm failure to react on any visceral level to her smile, the swell of her breasts, the curve of her hips–or to the more youthful charms of her security detail. She knew it as surely as she would have known fear or hunger. Not only were they gentle, they were together.

She’d been afraid the Coalition would try to send stud males, to pass them off–even to replace Katherinessen with an impostor. These weren’t quite like the gentle males of her acquaintance, though. They were wary, feral, watching the rooflines, eyes flickering to her honor and to the weapons of the other women. She shouldn’t have been surprised. Without women in a position to protect them, gentle males would find rough going in a society dominated by stud males and hormonally driven aggression. She liked the way they backed each other, the dark one and the tawny one, shoulder to shoulder like sister khir against a stranger pack. She wondered how old they were, with their strange smooth faces and silken skin, and the muscled hands that didn’t match their educated voices.

They survived the receiving line without a diplomatic incident, but both men seemed relieved when she ushered them inside. Even filtered by the nebula–invisible in daytime–the sun was intense at the equator, and they weren’t accustomed to it. She’d read that on Old Earth the cities were small, widely spaced, and densely packed, the population strictly limited–through culling and fetal murder, when necessary–and the regenerated ecosystems were strictly off‑limits without travel permits.

She shuddered, thinking of that circumscribed existence, locked away from the jungle for her own protection and the world’s–unable to pick up a long arm, sling it over her back with a daypack and a satphone, and vanish into the bush for a day or a week, free to range as far as her daring would support. She could have been like these men, she realized: coddled, blinking in the bright sunlight–or worse, because a woman wouldn’t rise to their position in the OECC. They’d probably never been outside a filter field in their lives.

Good. That was an advantage. One she’d need, given what Claude had told her about Katherinessen. The legendary Vincent Katherinessen, and his legendary ability to know what one thought before one knew it oneself.

She collected herself and focused on the deal at hand–which was, after all, a deal like any deal. Something to be negotiated from the position of strength that she was fortunate to have inherited. “We’ve arranged a reception before we sit down to dinner. And some entertainment first. If you’re not too tired from traveling.”

Katherinessen’s gaze flicked to his partner; Kusanagi‑Jones tipped his head in something that wasn’t quite a nod. The communication between them was interesting, almost transparent. Most people wouldn’t have even seen it; shecouldn’t quite read it, but she thought she might learn. In the meantime, it was good to know that it was going on, that the dynamic between the two men was not quite the leader‑and‑subordinate hierarchy they projected. Something else developed for navigating a male‑dominated space, no doubt.

“I think we’re acceptably fresh,” Katherinessen said, “as long as our licenses hold out. We both got a lot of sleep on the ship. But it would be nice to have a few moments to relax.”

Lesa wanted to ask if he meant cryo, but wasn’t sure if it would be in poor taste, so she nodded. “Come with me. The prime minister is eager to greet you, but she can wait half a tick.”

“She thought it best not to overdignify our arrival with her presence?” Katherinessen asked. A sharp, forward question; Lesa glanced at him twice, but his face stayed bland.

“I’ve negotiating authority, Miss Katherinessen. Parliament, of course, will have to ratify whatever we agree.”

“On our end, too. I’m assured it’s a formality.” His shrug continued, but so are we always assured, are we not? The raised eyebrow was a nice touch, including her in the conspiracy of those who labor at the unreasoning whim of the state. “Am I supposed to inquire as to the nature of the entertainment?”

She smiled back, playing the game. “It’s the day before Carnival. We thought you might like a real frontier experience, and the Trials began at first light today. If that meets with your approval.”

His smile broadened cautiously. He was really a striking man, with his freckles and his auburn hair. Pity he’s gentle,she thought, and then mocked herself for thinking it. If he wasn’t, after all, he wouldn’t be here. And she shouldn’t be anywhere near him, honor on her hip and security detail or not.

“We are at your disposal, Miss Pretoria,” he said, and gestured her graciously ahead. The security detail followed.

One reason Kusanagi‑Jones trained as rigorously as he did was because it speeded adaptation. He could have taken augmentation to increase or maintain his strength, but doing the work himself gave additional benefits in confidence, balance, and reflex integration. His brain knew what his body was capable of, and that could be the edge that kept him, or Vincent, alive.

That never changed the fact that for the first day or two in a changed environment, he struggled as if finding his sea legs. But as far as he was concerned, the less time spent tripping over invisible, immaterial objects, the better.

So it was a mixed blessing to discover that wherever Miss Pretoria was taking them, they were walking. It would help with acclimation, but it also left Vincent exposed. Kusanagi‑Jones clung to his side, only half an ear on the conversation, and kept an eye on the windows and the rooftops. To say that he didn’t trust the Penthesilean security was an understatement.

“Tell me about these Trials,” Vincent was saying. “And about Carnival.”

Lesa gave Vincent an arch look–over Kusanagi‑Jones’s shoulder–but he pretended oblivion. “Your briefings didn’t cover that?”

“You are mysterious,” Vincent answered diplomatically. “Intentionally so, I might add. Are they a sporting event?”

“A competition,” Lesa answered. “You’ll see. We’re in time for a few rounds before high heat.”

Around them, the atmosphere had textures with which Kusanagi‑Jones was unfamiliar. The heat was no worse than Cairo, but the air felt dense and wet, even filtered by his wardrobe, and it carried a charge. Expectant.

“It gets hotter than this?” Vincent asked.

Lesa flipped her hair behind her ear. “This is just morning. Early afternoon is the worst.”

They crossed another broad square that would have had Kusanagi‑Jones breaking out in a cold sweat if the heat wasn’t already stressing his wardrobe. Here, there were onlookers–mostly armed women, some of them going about their business and some not even pretending to, but all obviously interested in the delegates from Earth. Kusanagi‑Jones was grateful that Vincent knew how the game was played and stuck close to him, using his body as protection.

Smooth as if they had never been apart.

Miss Pretoria led them under cover at last, into the shade of an archway broad enough for two groundcars abreast. The path they followed descended, and women in small, chatting groups emerged from below–settling hats and draping scarves against the climbing sun–or fell in behind, following them down.

This place was cooler, and the air now carried not just electric expectation, but the scent of an arena. Chalk dust, sweat, and cooking oil tickled Kusanagi‑Jones’s sinuses. He sneezed, and Miss Pretoria smiled at him. He spared her a frown; she looked away quickly.

“Down this way,” she instructed, stepping out of the flow of traffic and gesturing them through a door that irised open when she passed her hand across it. Kusanagi‑Jones stepped through second, because the taller of the two security agents beat him to first place.

This was a smaller passageway, well lit without being uncomfortably bright. With a sigh, he let his wardrobe drop its inadequate compensations for the equatorial sun.

“Private passage,” Miss Pretoria said. “Would you rather sit in my household’s box, or the one reserved by Parliament for dignitaries?”

Vincent hesitated, searching her face for a cue. “Is yours nicer?” he asked.

Her mouth thinned. “It is,” she said. “And closer to the action.”

Kusanagi‑Jones caught the shift in Vincent’s weight, the sideways glance, as he was meant to. Miss Pretoria didn’t approve of them, or perhaps she didn’t approve of the “action.”

Kusanagi‑Jones stepped aside to let her take the lead again. It wasn’t far: a few dozen yards and they could hear cheering, jeering, the almost inorganic noise of a crowd.

There must have been other concealed side passages, because this one led them directly to the Pretoria house box. They emerged through another irising door and among comfortable seats halfway up the wall of an oblong arena. The galleries were severely raked, vertiginous, and one of the security agents reached out as if to steady him when he marched up to the edge. He stepped away from her hand, and she let it fall.

When he leaned out, he looked down on the heads of the group seated immediately below. And Vincent was just as unprotected from anybody watching from the next tier above.

While the immediate security concerns distracted Kusanagi‑Jones, Vincent touched his elbow. He didn’t need to be told to follow Vincent’s line of sight; he did it automatically, his alerted interest becoming a startle and a reflexive step closer as another cheer went up.

The floor of the arena was divided into long ovals, each one bounded by white walls that were thick, but not higher than a man’s waist. And in each of the pits were men.

Young men, judging from the distance, paired off and engaged in contests of martial arts, each pair attended by an older man and a woman–referees or adjutants. Kusanagi‑Jones, his hands tightening on the railing, had the expertise to know what he was seeing. These were men trained in a sort of barbaric amalgam of styles, and they were not fighting for points. He saw blood on the white walls, saw at least one individual fall and try to rise while his opponent continued kicking him, saw another absorb a punishing roundhouse and go down like a dropped handkerchief.

Beside him, Miss Pretoria cleared her throat. “There are screens,” she said, and touched the wall he leaned against. “Please sit.”

Vincent did, back to the wall, and Kusanagi‑Jones was comforted when he saw Vincent surreptitiously dial his wardrobe higher. Kusanagi‑Jones wasn’t the only one feeling exposed.

Miss Pretoria continued fussing with the wall, and images blossomed under her hands. These were the same combats being carried out below, close‑up, in real time. Nothing here was faked, or even as ritualized as the pre‑Diaspora bloodsports that had masqueraded as contests of athletic prowess.

It was a public display of barbarism that Kusanagi‑Jones should have found shocking if he were at all well socialized.

Vincent shifted slightly, leaning back in his chair, but Kusanagi‑Jones wouldn’t allow himself to give away so much. Instead, he placed himself in the seat before Vincent, beside Miss Pretoria, and leaned forward to speak into her ear as another roar went up from the galleries and–on the sand, on the monitors–another man fell. Medics came to him, capable women checking his airway and securing him to a back board, and the view on the monitor shifted to the weary champion feted by the referees. Around them, Kusanagi‑Jones saw women consulting datacarts and bending in close conversation.

“What’s the prize?”

Miss Pretoria considered him for a moment. “Status. To the victors go a choice of contracts; households with more status will bid for preferred males. Which benefits both them, and their mothers and sisters–”

Kusanagi‑Jones didn’t need to turn to see Vincent’s expression. He hadn’t let his fisheye drop since they set foot planetside.

Vincent reached past him, leaning forward, and indicated the monitor. “You’re selecting foraggressive men?”

Miss Pretoria showed her teeth. “We’re not docile, Miss Katherinessen. And we’re not interested in forcing males to conform to standards that ignore what nature intended for them.”

She said it easily, without apparent irony. But the look Vincent shot the back of Kusanagi‑Jones’s head had enough of that for all three of them and the self‑effacing security agents, too.

They lingered at the arena for an hour or so longer than Vincent really wanted to be there, although he supposed it was beneficial in terms of information gathered–both regarding the society they found themselves contending with, and what Miss Pretoria chose to show them about it. Angelo, of course, watched the bloodsport with as much appearance of interest as he might have mustered for a particularly tiresome political speech. Even Vincent wasn’t certain if he was analyzing the technique of the duelists and finding it wanting, musing on the ironies of this open display of arts that on Old Earth would be considered illegal, or sleeping with his eyes open.

Vincent, by contrast, let himself wince whenever he felt like it. Which was fairly frequently. Eventually, Miss Pretoria chose to take note of her guest’s discomfort, and suggested she show them their quarters so that they could take advantage of siesta to get ready for the reception and dinner.

The walk back was quiet and uneventful, though the still‑increasing heat left Vincent feeling unwell enough that he was grateful it wasn’t long. He recognized the courtyard where they’d first emerged from the limousine by its colors and layout. The particular building they approached–if any given portion of the city could be called a separate building–had a long sensual single‑story arch rising into a slender tower with a dimpled curve like that of a hip into a high‑kicked leg. The tower was even shaped like a human leg–a strong, shapely one, with a pointed toe and a smooth swell of calf near the peak. An oval window or door opened into that small valley; Vincent would have liked to see a garden there, pots and orchids, maybe. On Ur, on Old Earth, there would have been flowers, great waterfalls of them growing up the wall. The swags and garlands of dead, cut flowers were another alien grace note, a funereal touch. They even smelled dead, sweet rot, although if you ignored the fact that they were corpses they were pretty.

Miss Pretoria smiled a quiet professional smile. “We think the Dragons were fliers. That’s one of the reasons we call them Dragons; half the access points to the dwellings are above ground level, some of them at the tips of spires. It used to be more like four‑fifths of them, but now that people have been living here for a hundred years, things have changed.”

A hundred New Amazonian years; 150, give or take, of Earth’s. “I was noticing the lack of plants.”

“Oh,” she said. “We don’t really–well, I’ll show you.” She gestured them inside, through a curtain of cool air that ruffled the fine hairs on Vincent’s neck. The doorway was simply open to the outside, air exchange permitted as if it cost nothing in resources to heat or cool. He bit his lip–and then lost his suppressed comment totally as they walked through the dim entryway and he got his first glimpse of the interior.

For a moment, he forgot he was inside a building at all. The walls seemed to vanish; he had the eerie sensation of standing in the center of a broad, gently rolling meadow bordered on three sides by jungle and on the fourth by the sunlit curve of the bay. A dark blue sky overhead poured sunlight, but less brilliantly. Vincent’s headache eased as his squint relaxed. He no longer had to fight the urge to shade his eyes with his hand; this was like the sunlight he was accustomed to, the tame sunlight of Ur or Old Earth.

“Better?” Pretoria asked, pulling off her shoe.

“Very much so.” He glanced around, aware of Michelangelo’s solid presence on his left side, and pressed his foot into the flooring. It was soft, living. Not grass, of course, or the tough broad‑turf of home, but a carpet of multiple‑leaved, short‑stemmed plants sprinkled with bluish‑gray trefoils. He gestured at the ceiling and walls. “This is…awesome.”

He adjusted his wardrobe so he, too, was barefoot. Michelangelo did the same, without seeming to have noticed anyone else’s actions.

Miss Pretoria placed her shoes on a rack by the door, and Vincent stole a look at them. He couldn’t identify the material. The security detail kept their boots, custom bowing to practicality.

“This is the guests’ quarters of government center. The lobby is yours to make use of as you please. For your safety, we ask that you do not venture out unescorted.”

“Is Penthesilea so dangerous for tourists?” Vincent asked. It had seemed tame enough on their two brief jaunts, and he was interested by how casually the local dignitaries ventured out in public. The culture, in that way, reminded him of pre‑Repatriation Ur, a small‑town society in which everybody knew everybody else. He craned his neck, looking through the almost‑invisible ceiling, and watched some small winged animal dart overhead.

“Dangerous enough,” Miss Pretoria said, with a smile that might almost have been flirting, before she beckoned them on.

Somewhere between shaking Miss Pretoria’s hand and being shown to their quarters so they could get ready for dinner, Vincent started to wonder if he was ever going to hit his stride. Normally, he would have felt it happen, felt it fall into place with an almost audible click. Still, he had some advantages. Pretoria didn’t know how to respond to his relentless good humor. He didn’t rise to her provocation, and it set her back on her heels. Which was all to the good, because he needed her off‑balance and questioning her assumptions. If nothing else, it would make it easier to keep up appearances for Michelangelo, who needed to see Vincent doing what they had come here to do: thejob. The damned job, so important it took a definite article.

Angelo was restless again, fidgeting as he pretended to examine documents in the hours they were given to themselves. Vincent pretended to nap, his eyes closed, and listened first to the silence of heavy heat and then to the patter of rain on the sill of the windowless frame that looked out over Penthesilea.

For a moment, Vincent felt a pang at the necessity of that deceit. And then he remembered the Kaiwo Maru,the transparency of Michelangelo’s desire to bloody him. I took the therapy.

It explained, at least, why Michelangelo had never tried to contact him, even through their private channels. They were spies, for the Christ’s sake. They’d kept their affair secret for thirty years; Michelangelo could have passed a note without getting caught. If he’d wanted to. If the job and the goddamned Coalition hadn’t been more important than Vincent. Probably the job, frankly. Michelangelo had never cared for politics, for all he’d been willing to sacrifice just about anything to them.

That was fine. There were things that were more important to Vincent than the Coalition, too.

Such as bringing it down.

He sat up, rolled off the bed, and–without looking at Angelo–began to putter around their quarters. The suite was halfway up one of the asymmetrical towers. A single bedroom, with a bed big enough for four; a recreation area; and a fresher so primitive it used running water. Vincent had never actually seenone, apart from in antique records. The walls had the same simulated transparency as the “lobby” of the building, although now they showed the dark jungle and the phosphorescent sea. Overhead, blurred stars glowing through the dying nebula. Vincent paused for a moment to wonder at that–how the city itself vanished, except the bit he could see through the open window frame, and was replaced by the sensation of being alone in a reaching space.

The New Amazonians must have adapted, but he found it disconcerting. It wasn’t something a human architect would design for a living space. There was no coziness here, no safety of walls and den. This was a lair for a beast with wings, whose domain and comfort were the open sky.

Vincent grinned at Michelangelo, and nodded to the bed. “Do you want a nap before dinner?”

Michelangelo tapped his watch. “I’m on chemistry. And three months of cryo. I’ll be fine.” As if cryo were rest.

“Do you suppose the mattress squeaks?”

“We’ll find out, won’t we?” The smoke in Angelo’s voice was enough to curl Vincent’s toes. All lies. “Besides, I need to do my forms. Do you want first turn in the fresher?”

Vincent knew when he was beaten. He shrugged and switched his wardrobe off, pretending he didn’t notice Michelangelo’s lingering, to‑all‑appearances‑appreciative glance as the foglets swarmed into atmospheric suspension, misty streaks across his body before they left him naked. “If I can figure out how to work it,” he said, and walked through the arch into the antechamber, Michelangelo’s eyes on every step.

The fresher was primitive but the controls were obvious, the combined bath and shower a deep tub with dials on the wall, handles marked blue and red, a nozzle overhead. A washbasin and a commode completed the accommodations, and Vincent had the technology worked out in three ticks.

He stepped down into the tub–there were stairs, very convenient–and set the dial for hot.

Lesa didn’t have time to go home and change before dinner. Fortunately, the government center was all smart suites, and she’d had the foresight to stash a change of clothes in her office. She wouldn’t even have to commandeer one of the rooms for visiting dignitaries.

She ordered the door locked and stripped out of her suit, leaving it tossed across the back of her chair. She placed her honor on the edge of the desk, avoiding the blotter so she wouldn’t trigger her system, and turned to face the wall. “House, I need a shower, please.”

There had been no trace of a doorway in the transparent wall before her, but an aperture appeared as she spoke and irised wide. She passed through it, petting the city’s soap‑textured wall as she went by. It shivered acknowledgment and she smiled. Lights brightened as she entered, soothing shades of blue and white, and one wall smoothed to a mirror gloss.

House was still constructing the shower. She inspected her hair for split ends and her nose for black‑heads as she waited, but it didn’t take long. The floor underfoot roughened. The archway closed behind her and warm rain coursed from overhead. Lesa sighed and closed her eyes, turning her face into the spray. Her shoulders and back ached; she arched, spread her arms, lifted them overhead and stretched into a bow, then bent double and let her arms hang, pressing her face against her knees, waiting for the discomfort to ease.

The water smelled of seaweed and sweet flowers; it lathered when she rubbed her hands against her skin. She could have stayed in there all night, but she had things to do. “Conditioner and rinse, please,” she said, and House poured first oily and then clean hot water on her, leaving behind only a faint, lingering scent as it drained into the floor.

Her comb and toiletries were in her desk. She dried herself on a fluffy towel–which House provided in a cubbyhole, and which she gave back when she was done–and sat naked at her desk, wrinkling the dirty suit on her chair, to comb through her tangles and spy on her guests while she planned her attack.

“Show me the Colonial diplomats.” There was always a twinge of guilt involved in this, but it washer job, and she was good at it. Her blotter cleared, revealing the guest suite.

Miss Kusanagi‑Jones stood in the center of the floor, balanced and grounded on resilient carpetplant, his feet widely spaced in some martial‑arts stance. Eyes closed, his hands and feet moved in time with his breath as he slid sideways and Lesa leaned forward, fascinated. She’d suspected he was a fighter. He held himself right, collected, confident, but without the swaggering she was used to seeing on successful males. As if he didn’t feel the need to constantly claim his space and assert his presence.

She wondered if this was what combat training looked like on a gentle male, one whose strength wasn’t bent on reproduction and dominance. It suited him, she thought, watching his stocky, barrel‑chested body glide from form to form without rising or falling from a level line. He finished as she watched, then paused, a sheen of sweat making his dark skin seem to glow in comparison with his loose white trousers. Then he bowed formally and dropped into slow‑motion push‑ups, alternating arms.

Male arm strength. Which made it no less impressive.

Katherinessen came from the shower a moment later, naked and dripping slightly. Wisps of mist hung around him, and green, gold, and blue lights glowed through the tawny skin in the hollow of his left wrist. He touched them; the mist drifted in spirals about his body, and his hair and skin were dry. Even the water droplets on the leaves of the carpetplant ended abruptly, five steps from the shower door.

He was older than she’d thought, Lesa realized. He was a ropy man, long and lean, the fibers of his muscles clearly visible under the skin, but that skin had a soft, lived‑in look. He moved in his body unself‑consciously. She thought he might be showing himself off to his lover a little, which made her smile.

He could be anywhere from thirty‑five New Amazonian years to fifty; if he were a native she would have guessed thirty from the sparse gray in his hair and his relatively unlined face, but the Colonials stayed out of the sun; he might be much older.

And that was without accounting for the OECC’s medical technology. She’d heard they could live into their second century in vigorous health. It worried her; these men were the equivalents of Elders, if men had Elders, and if the Colonial Coalition had any sense at all, they would be as wily and problematic as anyone in the New Amazonian Parliament.

And they were men. Men with education and resources and the power of a multiworld organization behind them. But men,half crazy with evolutionary pressures half the time. The OECC couldn’t conquerNew Amazonia; they’d proven thatto everyone’s satisfaction. But if it ever decided that what New Amazonia had to offer wasn’t worth the trouble and loss of face its existence created–and if they could find enough reasons to justify their actions to the Governors–they could destroy it.

Bang. As easily as Lesa could lay down her comb, open the closet door with a word to House, and pull out her formal dress.

Lesa didn’t believe her mother’s confident prediction that the Governors would protect them. For one thing, as long as they remained an ungoverned world, they weren’t under the OECC’s ecological hegemony. The Governors might easily decide it was better to shoot first and reconstruct later, and they might be willing to destroy the Dragons’ legacy to do it.

She dressed and found her evening holster on the hanger. It was supple red leather, detailed in gold, and it stood out against the sea‑snake sequins of her flowing trousers.

Kusanagi‑Jones was finishing his push‑ups when she turned back to the image in her blotter. He came up on his knees and rose with casual power, standing in time to hook Katherinessen around the waist as Katherinessen went by, and pulled him close.

Lesa flicked the desk off and reached for her honor in the same gesture. Bonding the pistol into her holster, she frowned.

All right, they were cute. But she couldn’t afford to start thinking of them as human.

Angelo’s body was warm and firm through his gi. His hair tickled Vincent’s cheek and the crook of his neck smelled of clean sweat, quickly fading into the same toiletry licenses he’d been using for the last thirty years. Vincent wondered what he’d do if they ever took that particular cedar note off the market. It was a knownsmell, viscerally, and Vincent’s body responded. “Go get clean. It’s pleasant. Decadent. You’ll like it.”

Michelangelo stepped back, his gi vanishing into curls of foglets. His body was still hard under it, blocky, the pattern of moles and tight‑spiraled curls on his chest at once familiar and alien, like coming home to a place where you used to live.

“Figures. We have to come to the last outposts of civilization for our decadence.” Tendons flexed as he glanced at his watch. “Be out in a few ticks. I’ve given you access to my licenses. Figure out what I should wear, won’t you?”

Vincent smiled to hide the twisting sensation. Dressing Angelo had always been Vincent’s job. Left to his own devices, Michelangelo would probably walk around naked most of the time. Not that most people would object–

Mind on your job,Vincent reprimanded himself, and set about trying to figure out what the New Amazonians would consider “formal.”

Uncertain what cultural conditions would apply, their offices had issued each of them a full suite of licenses, which, of course, did not include any hats. Formal fashions on Old Earth tended to be more elaborate than those on colonial planets, which cleared about half the database, but Michelangelo had the advantage of his complexion and looked wonderful in colors that Vincent couldn’t remotely carry off.

Vincent chose a wrap jacket and trousers in rusty oranges and reds, simple lines to offset the pattern, the shoulders flashing with antique‑looking mirrors and bouillon embroidery. That should dazzle a few eyes–and hearts, if Vincent was reading Miss Pretoria’s admiring glances accurately. He had absolutely no objections to using his partner’s brooding charisma as a weapon.

For himself, he chose a winter‑white dinner jacket and trousers instead of tights, because he didn’t want to risk slippery feet if they were expected to go barefoot again. The jacket was plain, almost severe, with understated shaded green patterning on the lapels.

He’d wear a shirt and cravat to dress it up. Let them stare at Michelangelo’s chest; it was prettier than Vincent’s, anyway.

He was already dressed, toiletries arranging his hair and moisturizing his face, when Michelangelo emerged from the fresher. He flicked his watch, sending Michelangelo the appropriate license key. Michelangelo’s wardrobe assembled the suit in moments; he glanced at himself in the mirrored wall and nodded slightly, as if forced, unwilling to admit that Vincent had made him handsome. “I look like a Hindu bride,” he said, fiddling with his cuffs.

“I don’t think we have a license for bangles,” Vincent answered. “If we’d known how conspicuously the New Amazonians consume, I would have requisitioned some.”

Michelangelo’s disapproval creased the corners of his eyes. When he spoke, it was in their own private code, the half‑intelligible pidgin of one of Ur’s most backwater dialects and a random smattering of other languages that they’d developed in training and elaborated in years since. It had started as a joke, Vincent teaching Michelangelo to speak one of his languages, and Michelangelo elaborating with ridiculous constructions in Greek, Swahili, Hindi, and fifteen others. It was half‑verbal and half‑carrier, tightbeamed between their watches–practiced until, half the time, all they had needed was a glance and a hand gesture and a fragment of a sentence.

It had saved their lives more than once.

“A planet like this,” Michelangelo said, “and they’re wearing nonrenewables and doing who‑knows‑what to the ecosystem. Haven’t seen forests like that–”

–outside of old 2‑D movies and documentaries about pre‑Change, pre‑Diaspora Old Earth. Vincent knew, and sympathized. The frustration in Michelangelo’s voice couldn’t quite cover the awe. Ur didn’t have forests like that, and neither did Le Prй, Arcadia, or Cristalia. Never mind New Earth, which was about as dissimilar to Old Earth as it could be, without being a gas giant.

“See the logging scars when we came in?” Michelangelo continued. “Bet you balcony passes to the Sydney Bolshoi that those outgoing lighters are exporting wood.”

“Not to Old Earth. Not legally.”

They’d dealt with their fair share of environmental criminals in the past, though. And it wasn’t even necessarily illegal trade; there were other colonies, not under OECC oversight–and there are idiots on every planet who considered possession more important than morality.

Michelangelo knew it, too, and knew his denial was reflexive. “So smuggling happens. More to the point, what do you expect from a bunch of women? Short‑term thinking; profit now, deal with the consequences later.”

Vincent shrugged. “They can be educated. Assisted.”

“Perhaps. You saw her shoes, right?”

Vincent nodded. “Pretoria’s? I didn’t recognize the fiber. What about them?”

“ Leather,Vincent.” Michelangelo’s stagy shudder ran a scintilla of light across the mirrors on the yoke of his jacket. “I’m trying very hard not to think about dinner.”

4

FOR THE THIRTIETH TIME, KUSANAGI‑JONES WISHED THEIR downloads on New Amazonian customs had been more in depth. Although, given this was the first physicalcontact between the New Amazonians and a Coalition representative since the Six‑Weeks‑War almost twenty years ago, he was lucky to get anything.

He’d guessed right about the food, and he hadn’t even had to wait until dinner to prove it. There were cruditйs–familiar vegetables in unusual cultivars, and some unfamiliar ones that must be local produce amenable to human biochemistry. But he didn’t trust anything else, even if he’d been rude enough to wardrobe up an instrument and stick it in a sample.

Usually mission nerves killed his appetite and he struggled with the diplomatic requirements of eating what was set before him. As the gods of Civil Service would have it, though, when the options included things he was unwilling to consume even in the name of dйtente, he was practically dizzy with hunger.

And the wine the New Amazonians served at the reception was potent. So he crunched finger‑length slices of some sweet root or stem that reminded him of burgundy‑colored jicama and stuck at Vincent’s elbow like a trophy wife, keeping a weather eye on the crowd.

Penthesilea was the planetary capital, and there were dignitaries from Medea, Aminatu, Hippolyta, and Lakshmi Bai in attendance, in addition to the entire New Amazonian Parliament, the prime minister, and the person whom Kusanagi‑Jones understood to be her wife. There was also a security presence, though he was not entirely certain of its utility in the company of so many armed and obviously capable women.

Even that assembly–at least three hundred individuals, perhaps 95 percent female–didn’t suffice to make the ballroom seem crowded. They moved barefoot over the cool living carpets, dancing and laughing and conversing in whispers, with ducked heads, while the musicians sawed gamely away on a raised and recessed stage, and handsome men in sharp white coats bore trays laden with what Kusanagi‑Jones could only assume were delicacies to the guests. It could have been an embassy party on any of a dozen planets, if he crossed his eyes.

But that wasn’t what provoked Kusanagi‑Jones’s awe. What kept distracting him every time he lifted his eyes from his plate, or the conversation taking place between Vincent and Prime Minister Claude Singapore–while Singapore’s wife and Miss Pretoria hovered like attendant crows–was the way the walls faded from warm browns and golds through tortoiseshell translucence before vanishing overhead to reveal a crescent moon and the bannered light of the nebula called the Gorgon. The nebula rotated slowly enough that the motion was unnerving, but not precisely apparent.

When the silver‑haired prime minister was distracted by a murmured comment or question from an aide, Kusanagi‑Jones tapped Vincent on the arm, offered him the plate, and–when Vincent ducked to examine what was on offer–whispered in his partner’s ear, “Suppose they often feel like specimens on a slide?”

“I suppose you adapt,” Vincent answered. He selected a curved flake of something greenish and crispy, and held it up to inspect it. Light radiated from the walls–a flattering, ambient glow that did not distract from the view overhead.

“Are you admiring our starscape, Miss Kusanagi‑Jones?”

He glanced at the prime minister, hiding his blink of guilt, but it wasn’t Singapore who had spoken. Rather, her wife, Maiju Montevideo.

“Spectacular. Do I understand correctly that Penthesilea is entirely remnant architecture?”

Montevideo was a Rubenesque woman of medium stature. Regardless of his earlier comment regarding Hindu brides, Kusanagi‑Jones was minded to compare her to the goddess Shakti grown grandmotherly. Her eyes narrowed with her smile as she gestured to the domed, three‑lobed chamber. “All this,” she said. She led with her wrist; Kusanagi‑Jones wondered if New Amazonia had the sort of expensive girls’ schools where they trained apparently helpless young women to draw blood with their deportment. These women would probably consider that beneath them, but they certainly had mastered the skills.

Her eyes widened; he tried to decide if it was calculated or not. From the shift of Vincent’s weight, he thought so. “Miss Pretoria hasn’t taken you to see the frieze yet?”

“There hasn’t been time.” Miss Pretoria slid between them, a warning in the furrow between her eyes. Interesting.

“No,” Vincent said. Vincent didn’t look up, apparently distracted by the vegetables, but he wouldn’t have missed anything Kusanagi‑Jones caught. His nimble fingers turned and discarded one or two more slices before he abandoned the plate untasted on a side table.

Elder Montevideo showed her teeth. Kusanagi‑Jones couldn’t fault New Amazonian dentistry. Or perhaps it was the apparent lack of sweets in the local diet.

“After dinner?” she asked, a little too gently.

Kusanagi‑Jones could still feel it happen. Vincent’s chin came up and his spine elongated. It wasn’t enough motion to have served as a tell to a poker player, but Kusanagi‑Jones noticed. His own tension eased.

Vincent had just clicked. He was on the job and he’d found his angle. Everything was going to be just fine.

Vincent tasted his lips. “Perhaps instead ofdinner?” he said lightly, a quip, beautiful hands balled in his pockets.

“The food isn’t to your liking, Miss Katherinessen?”

Vincent’s shrug answered her, and also fielded Kusanagi‑Jones’s sideways glance without ever breaking contact with Singapore. “We don’t eat animals,” he said negligently. “We consider murder barbaric, whether it’s for food or not.”

Perfect. Calm, disgusted, a little bored. A teacher’s disapproval, as if what he said should be evident to a backward child. He might as well have said, We don’t play in shit.

Michelangelo’s chest was so tight he thought his control might crack and leave him gasping for breath.

“Strange,” Montevideo said. The prime minister–Singapore–towered over her, but Elder Montevideo dominated their corner. “I hear some on Coalition worlds will pay handsomely for meat.”

“Are you suggesting you support illegal trade with Coalition worlds?” Vincent’s smile was a thing of legend. Hackles up, Montevideo took a half‑step forward, and he was only using a quarter of his usual wattage. “There’s a child sex trade, too. I don’t suppose you condone that.”

Montevideo’s mouth was half open to answer before she realized she’d been slapped. “That’s the opinion of somebody whose government encourages fetal murder and contract slavery?”

“It is,” Vincent said. He pulled his hand from his pocket and studied the nails. Montevideo didn’t drop her gaze.

Kusanagi‑Jones steadied his own breathing and stretched each sense. Every half‑alert ear in the room was pricked, every courtier, lobbyist, and spy breath‑held. Elder Montevideo’s hand was not the only one resting on a weapon, but it was hers that Kusanagi‑Jones assessed. Eleven‑millimeter caseless, he thought, with a long barrel for accuracy. Better to take Vincent down, if it came to it, risk the bullet on his own wardrobe and trust that the worried, level look Miss Pretoria was giving him meant she’d back his play if the guns came out.

He wondered about the New Amazonian rules of honor and if it mattered that Vincent was male and that he didn’t seemarmed.

And then Vincent looked up, as if his distraction had been a casual thing, and gave her a few more watts. He murmured, almost wistfully, “Now that we’ve established that we think each other monsters, do you suppose we can get back to business?”

She blinked first, but Kusanagi‑Jones didn’t let himself stop counting breaths until Claude Singapore nudged her, and started to laugh. “He almost got you,” Singapore said, and Montevideo tipped her head, acknowledging the touch.

Just a couple of fairies. He gritted his teeth into an answering smile. Apparently, it would have been thought a victory for Vincent if he provoked the woman enough to make her draw. A Pyrrhic victory, for most men in their shoes–

Singapore glanced at her watch–an old‑fashioned wristwatch with a band, external–and then laced her right hand through Montevideo’s arm. “We’ll be wanted upstairs.”

Vincent fell in beside her and Kusanagi‑Jones assumed his habitual place. He didn’t think Singapore was used to looking up to anybody, and she had to, to Vincent. “What I’d like to do instead of dinner is get a look at your power plant.”

“Unfortunately,” Singapore said, “we can’t arrange that.”

“Official secrets?” Vincent asked, not tooarchly. “We’ll have to talk about it eventually, if we’re going to work out an equitable trade arrangement.”

Kusanagi‑Jones could have cut himself on Singapore’s smile. “Are you suggesting that the Cabinet will resort to extortion, Miss Katherinessen? Because I assure you, the restoration of our appropriated cultural treasures is a condition of negotiation, not a bargaining chip.”

She ushered them through the door. A half‑dozen people around the room disengaged themselves from their conversations and followed them into the hall.

“It would make a nice gesture of goodwill,” said Vincent.

And Elder Singapore smiled. “It might. But you can’t get there from here.”

The route to the dining room wound up a flight of stairs and across an open footbridge, almost a catwalk. Kusanagi‑Jones breathed shallowly; his chemistry was mostly coping with the alien pollen, but he didn’t want to tax it. He leaned on Vincent’s arm lightly as Vincent fell back beside him. “Why are we antagonizing the people in charge?”

“Did you see Montevideo glance at her wife?”

Kusanagi‑Jones didn’t bother to hide his shrug.

“They’re not the ones in charge. Maybe a little fire will draw the real negotiators out.” Vincent paused and smiled tightly. “Also, aren’t you curious why they wanted us to see these friezes and Miss Pretoria was all a‑prickle about it? Because I know I am.”

Kusanagi‑Jones’s hands wanted to shake, but he wouldn’t let them. They entered a banquet room, and he saw Vincent seated on the prime minister’s left and took his own seat next to Miss Pretoria, touching the glossy wood of the chairs and table as if he were used to handling such things. He sat, and discussed his dietary needs with Pretoria, then allowed her to serve him–which she did adroitly. The food was presented family style, rather than on elaborately arranged and garnished plates, whisked from some mysterious otherworld to grace the incredible solid wooden table.

There werevegetarian options, although most of them seemed to contain some sort of animal byproducts. But the scent of charred flesh made eating anything–even the salad and the bread with oil and vinegar that Miss Pretoria assured him was safe–an exercise in diplomatic self‑discipline. It smelled like a combat zone; all that was missing was the reek of scorched hair and the ozone tang of burned‑out utility fogs.

The cheese and butter and sour cream were set on the table between plates laden with slices of roasted animal flesh, like some scene out of atavistic history–the sort of thing you expected to find in galleries next to paintings of beheading and boiling in oil and other barbaric commonplaces. Michelangelo brushed his sleeve up and touched his watch again, adjusting his blood chemistry to compensate for creeping nausea, and kept his eyes on his own plate until he finished eating.

He shouldn’t be huddled in his shell. He should be talking with Miss Pretoria and the assembled dignitaries, walking the thin line between interest and flirting. He should be watching the women–especially Elena Pretoria, a grande dame if he’d ever met one, and most likely Lesa Pretoria’s mother–and the two reserved, quiet men at the table, picking out what he could about the social order, trying to understand the alliances and enmities so he could exploit them later.

The women seemed interested in Vincent and himself–by which he meant, attracted to–and a glance at Vincent confirmed he thought so, too. Elders Singapore and Montevideo were the obvious exceptions to the rule. They had eyes only for each other, and Kusanagi‑Jones might have found it sweet if he hadn’t suspected they’d cheerfully have him shot the instant he wasn’t conforming to their agenda.

The more he watched Montevideo, the more he thought–despite her apparent spunk–that she was like politicians’ wives everywhere: intelligent, intent, and ready to defer–at least publicly–to her mate’s judgment. Vincent was right; she looked at Singapore every time she said something.

Kusanagi‑Jones bit his lip on a pained laugh; he recognized no little bit of himself in her behavior.

It didn’t hurt that Vincent was now paying an outrageous and obviously insincere court to the prime minister that still seemed to entertain her enormously. She had switched to treating them like indulged children; Kusanagi‑Jones found it distasteful, but Vincent seemed willing to play the fool. The women were asking interested questions about the Colonial Coalition, seeming shocked by things in absolute disproportion to their importance.

Montevideo was particularly fascinated by eugenics and population‑control legislation, and kept asking pointed questions, which Vincent answered mildly. Kusanagi‑Jones pushed his plate away, unable to face another mouthful of red‑leaf lettuce and crispy native fruit mixed with imported walnuts. It wasn’t so bad when he wasn’t trying to eat, and it was amusing to eavesdrop as Montevideo tried to get a rise out of Vincent.

“Well, of course the Cabinet tries to limit abortions,” Vincent was saying. “Ideally, you control population through more proactive means–” He shrugged, and speared a piece of some juicy vegetable that Kusanagi‑Jones couldn’t identify with a perfectly normal Earth‑standard fork–except Kusanagi‑Jones would bet the forks were actual metal, mined and refined, and not fogs. “But even medical bots fail, or can be made to fail. Biology’s a powerful force; people have a reproductive drive.”

“You don’t think… peoplecan be trusted to make their own decisions, Miss Katherinessen?” Arch, still sharp.

Kusanagi‑Jones didn’t need to look at Vincent to know he would be smiling that wry, gentle smile. He looked anyway, and didn’t regret it, although Vincent’s expression made it hard to breathe. Again. Dammit.

He could not afford to care, to trust Vincent. He was here to destroy him. New Earth, all over again. Only worse this time.

“No,” Vincent said, as Kusanagi‑Jones picked the remainder of his bread apart. “We evolved for much more dangerous times, and memory is short. Just because Old Earth survived pandemics and famines and Assessments during the Diaspora to achieve a few modern ideas about stewardship doesn’t mean that enlightenment trickles down to everybody. And it’s very hard for most people to postpone an immediate want for a payoff they won’t see, and neither will their grandchildren.”

“Thus the Governors,” Elder Montevideo said, folding plump, delicate hands. The prime minister watched, silently, and so did Elder Pretoria, who was seated at the far end of the table.

“The Coalition,” Kusanagi‑Jones said, to demonstrate solidarity. He would notshow pain. “So the Governors don’t intervene again on a large scale. They arestill watching.”

He knew better than to attempt Vincent’s trick of speaking as if to an idiot child, but it was tempting.

“The Coalition isn’t allied with the Governors, then?” asked one of the other women at the table, an olive‑skinned matron with cool hazel eyes who never stopped smiling. Elder Kyoto, if Kusanagi‑Jones had the name right. He’d logged it; he could check his watch if needed.

“The Coalition is interested in…minimizing the impact the Governors have on human life. And the Governors permit the Coalition Cabinet that latitude.”

“And the Governors must be prevented from intervening?”

“If you know your history.” Vincent smiled right back. “It keeps us on our toes.”

Elder Singapore covered her partner’s hand with her own. “If it wasn’t for Diaspora, New Amazonia wouldn’t be here. And we would be robbed of the pleasure of each other’s company. Which would be a great pity indeed.”

Vincent asked, “Was yours one of the private ships?”

“The Colony craft? Yes. Ur was also, wasn’t it?”

He turned his fork over as if fascinated by the gleams of light on the tines. “My great‑grandmother was disgustingly rich. It was an experimental society, too. The colonists were all pregnant women. No men. And there was a religious element.”

Elder Montevideo leaned forward, although she wasn’t quite overcome enough to rest her elbows on the table. “What was the purpose of the experiment?”

“To prove a point of philosophy. To establish an egalitarian matriarchy based on Gnostic Christian principles.” He glanced up, twinkling. “My mother is the only woman on the Colonial Coalition Cabinet. We’re not so different.”

She sat back, picked up her silver knife, and gave minute attention to buttering a roll. “Our founding mothers believed that it was possible to live in balance with nature,” she said. “And by balance, they did not mean stasis. They meant an evolving dynamic whereby both the planet’s Gaian principle and her population would benefit. Not exploitation, as it was practiced on Old Earth: women do not exploit. We take care when we practice forestry, for example, to leave renewal niches, and we practice sustainable agriculture and humane animal husbandry.” The knife went down with a clink. “Of course, the impact of our activities is attenuated because we didn’t need to bootstrap through a fossil‑fuel economy. We’ve been fortunate.”

At least they know it,Kusanagi‑Jones thought. He sipped his wine and watched her eat.

“I’m curious,” Vincent said. “Something you said earlier hinted to me that you find eugenics distasteful.”

Miss Pretoria laughed out loud and glanced at the prime minister for permission to continue. Kusanagi‑Jones saw the elder Pretoria lean forward, but she still held her tongue. A watcher.Dangerous, if the mind was as sharp as the eyes. “If Old Earth gave women reproductive autonomy, I don’t believe you’d have a population problem. Wedon’t–”

“ Youhave an undamaged ecosystem,” Kusanagi‑Jones said. Vincent might have been the one to guess that a bold‑faced refusal to temporize was one way to earn their respect, but Kusanagi‑Jones wasn’t too shy to capitalize on it. Vincent didn’t quite smile, but the approval was there between them, warm and alive. “For now, at least, until you overrun it.”

Kusanagi‑Jones, who had been about to continue, closed his mouth tightly as Elder Montevideo spoke. “One of the reasons our foremothers chose to emigrate was because of Earth’s eugenics practices. They did not feel that a child’s genetic health or sexual orientation determined its value. Do you,Miss Kusanagi‑Jones? Miss Katherinessen? Because I assure you, the mothers at this table would disagree.”

Vincent’s eyes were on Montevideo, but Kusanagi‑Jones could tell that his attention was focused on Miss Pretoria. And even Kusanagi‑Jones could feel her discomfort; she was buzzingwith it. “I think,” Vincent said, carefully, “the health of a system outweighs the needs of a component. I think prioritizing resources is more important than individual well‑being.”

“Even your own?” Miss Pretoria asked, laying down her fork.

Vincent glanced at her, but Kusanagi‑Jones answered.

“Oh, yes,” he said, directing a smile at his partner.

He was a Liar; neither his voice nor his expression betrayed the venom he’d have liked to inject into them. He projected pride, praise, admiration. It didn’t matter. Vincent would know the truth. It might even sting. “Especially his own.”

Lesa shouldn’t have been taking so much pleasure in watching Katherinessen bait Maiju and Claude, but her self‑control was weak. And a small gloat never hurt anyone,she thought. Besides, even if the enemy of Lesa’s enemy wasn’t necessarily Lesa’s ally, the prime minister richly deserved to be provoked–and in front of Elena. Lesa saw what Katherinessen was playing at. He lured them to underestimate and patronize, while picking out tidbits of personal and cultural information, assembling a pattern he could read as well as Lesa could have.

He was also staking out space, while getting them to treat him like a headstrong male. Clever, though confrontational. Lesa often used the same tactic to manipulate people into self‑incrimination.

Just when she thought she had their system plotted, though, Kusanagi‑Jones turned and sank his teeth into Katherinessen, hard. And Lesa blinked, reassessing. A quick glance around the table confirmed that only she had caught the subtext. And that was even more interesting–a hint of tension, a chink in their unity. The kind of place where you could get a lever in, and pry.

She wondered if Kusanagi‑Jones was aware of Katherinessen’s duplicity, and if he was, if Katherinessen knewhe was aware, or if there was a different stress on the relationship. They’d been apart for a long time, hadn’t they? Since New Earth. Things changed in seventeen years.

Then as fast as it had been revealed the flash of anger was gone, and Lesa was left wondering again. Because it was possible she’d been intended to see it, that it was more misdirection. They were good enough to keep her guessing, especially when Katherinessen smiled fondly across the table at Kusanagi‑Jones, not at all like a man acknowledging a hit.

Lesa was aware of the other dynamics playing out around the table. They were transparent to her, the background of motivations and relationships that she read and manipulated as part of her work, every day. But none of them were as interesting as Katherinessen and Kusanagi‑Jones. Their opacities, their complexities. She could make a study just of the two of them.

And something still kept picking at the edge of her consciousness, like Katherinessen picking at Maiju, like a bird picking for a grub, though she didn’t quite know what to call it. She wondered if they could have fooled her, if perhaps they weren’t gentle after all. The idea gave her a cold moment, as much for fear of her own capabilities eroding as for the idea of a couple of stud males running around loose.

Even the best of them–even Robert, whom she loved–were predators. Biologically programmed, as a reproductive strategy. Uncounted years of human history were the proof. In previous societies–in allrecorded societies, other than the New Amazonian–when a woman died by violence, the perpetrator was almost always male. And almost always a member of the woman’s immediate family, often with the complicity of society. The Coalition was a typical example of what men did to women when given half an excuse: petty restrictions, self‑congratulatory patronization, and a slew of justifications that amounted to men asserting their property rights.

Two stud males–if they were,and she honestly didn’t think so–on the loose and unlicensed in Penthesilea were unlikely to bring down society. But by the same token, Lesa wouldn’t let a tame fexa run loose in the city. There was always the chance somebody would get bitten.

The irony of that concern, compared to the gender treason she was plotting, made her smile bitterly.

“Miss Pretoria,” Katherinessen said, as the waiter removed his plate, “you’re staring at me.” He hadn’t looked up.

“Are there circumstances under which the well‑being of a minority doesmatter? Circumstances of gross injustice?”

“Oppression? Such as the status of men on New Amazonia?”

Elder Kyoto, the minister of security, waved her fork. “There are sound behavioral–”

“Just so,” Claude said. The other guests went quiet. “Or what the Coalition would like to do to New Amazonia, to bring it under hegemony. Setting all that aside for the moment–as civilized people should be able to do”–and it seemed to Lesa that Claude reserved a particularly bland smile for Kusanagi‑Jones–“is it still an interesting question on its own merits?”

Katherinessen steepled long fingers. Dessert was being served. He declined a pastry just as Lesa warned them that there was most likely butter in the crust, but both males accepted coffee without cream.

Katherinessen tasted the coffee as soon as it was set before him, buying a few more moments to consider his answer and unconcerned with his transparency. “Whichever group is in ascension at a given moment is, historically speaking, both unlikely to acknowledge even the existenceof abuses or bias, and also to justify the bias on any grounds they can–social, biological, what have you. May we agree on that?”

Claude’s smile slid from bland toward predatory. “Mostly.”

“Then let me raise a counterquestion. Do you believe an egalitarian society is possible?”

“Define egalitarian.”

“Advancement based solely on merit.” Katherinessen smiled at his partner, who was stolidly stirring his coffee over and over again. “As Angelo is fond of pointing out to me, I have certain advantages of birth. My family is well regarded in society on Ur. By comparison, on Old Earth before Assessment, any of us would have been disadvantaged due to our skin tone–if we lived in the industrialized world.”

“Protected by it, later,” Kusanagi‑Jones said under his breath. He was leaning on the arm of his chair, toward Lesa; she thought she was the only one who heard it.

Claude didn’t answer immediately. She nodded around the excuse of a bite of pastry, forked up in haste, as if inspecting Katherinessen’s words for the trap. “So even Assessment wasn’t an equalizer. Not a fresh start.”

“It was the opposite of an equalizer.” Katherinessen shrugged. “Each round of Assessed were chosen on the grounds of arbitrary standards programmed into the Governors before they were released. It was the epitome of unnatural selection, for an elite. Agriculturists, scientists, engineers, programmers, diplomats, artisans, and none of them Caucasian–what more arbitrary set of criteria could you imagine for survival?”

Lesa laid her fork down. “I don’t believe equality exists.”

Elder Kyoto glanced around. “Why not?”

“Because Miss Katherinessen is right, but doesn’t take it far enough. Not only will whoever’s on top fight to stay there, but if you reset everyone to equality, whoever wins the scramble for power will design the rules to stay there.”

Katherinessen nodded. “So what do you think ispossible?”

“If I were the oppressed?”

A short pause, with eyebrow. “Sure.”

Lesa wondered if she could startle him. The Colonials didthink everybody on New Amazonia was an idiot, or at least naive. That much was plain. “Conquest. Revolution. Dynamic change would ensure that nobody ever wound up holding too much power. Fortunately for me, as a member of the ruling class, people tend to prefer the status quo to unrest unless they’re very unhappy. Which is why the Coalition isn’t entirely welcome here.”

She picked her fork up again and began flaking apart the buttery layers of pastry, not so much eating as pushing them around on the plate to cover the gilding. Katherinessen sighed. She thought it was satisfaction. She didn’t want to feel the answering glow in herself, as if she’d just done well on a test.

“You are so very right.” Katherinessen glanced at Kusanagi‑Jones, who had stopped stirring his coffee, but wasn’t drinking.

“You know what they say,” Kusanagi‑Jones quipped. “Dйtente is achieved when everybody’s unhappy.”

The bipeds communicate. There are the new ones, the males in their dual‑gender system. Kii supposes one biologically convenient system for randomizing genetic material is as good as another, but the bipeds also use theirs as a basis for an arcane system of taboos and restrictions. At first Kii thinks this is adaptively obligated, that the child‑bearing sex was responsible for the protection of the offspring, and the society was structured around that need. There are local animals with similar adaptations–unlike the Consent, unlike the khir–where the greatest danger to cubs is posed by unrelated males, which prey on the offspring of other males.

Kii is startled to find an intelligent species retaining such atavistic tendencies. But then, Kii is also startled to find an intelligent species evolve without also evolving the Consent, or something like it. And since the territorial dispute, Kii is forced to acknowledge that no matter how developed their technology and aesthetics, the bipeds have no Consent.

Kii wonders if the other population of bipeds, encroaching again on the ones Kii thinks of as Kii’s bipeds, intend another territorial dispute. The timeslip is threads that converge and threads that part; patterns of interference. It is a wave that has not collapsed. The nonlocal population may transgress, driven, Kii thinks, by outstripping its habitat. There may be another dispute. The probability is not insignificant that the local population of aliens will be overrun. Kii is possessive of the aliens, and Kii’s possessiveness informs the Consent.

If the other population encroaches, Kii wishes to intervene again, more strongly than before. The Consent is not so sanguine.

Yet.

5

EVEN VINCENT WAS RELIEVED WHEN DINNER ENDED, though it segued without hesitation into another endless reception. This one at least had more the air of a party, and finally there were a number of other men present.

As soon as they left the table, the elder Pretoria cut Michelangelo off Vincent’s arm as neatly as impoverished nobility absconding with an heiress at a debutante’s ball. Despite Michelangelo’s long‑suffering eyeroll, he went, flirting gamely.

Vincent took this as a sign that the business portion of the evening had ended, and availed himself of the bar. He wasn’t going to get drunk–his watch would see to that–but he would examine the options. It would give him something to do with his hands while considering the evening’s haul.

He accepted the drink he’d pointed to in a moment of bravado–something greenish‑gold and slightly cloudy, a spirit infused with alien herbs, if his nose didn’t mislead him–and leaned into a quiet corner, for the moment observed by no one except the security detail, who appeared to be making sure he didn’t wander off.

It was a reversal of his and Michelangelo’s usual roles, but not an unpracticed one. Michelangelo could pretend to charisma as effectively as anything else, and dominate a room with ease. And the dynamics of an assembly such as this could be revealing. It was like watching a dance that was also combat and a game of chess.

Miss Pretoria, for example, was leaving a conversational cluster that included the person Vincent had tentatively identified as the minister of the militia–of Security, he corrected himself, which was a significant choice of title on its own–and crossing to the group that encompassed Michelangelo and Elena Pretoria, and a tall, beautifully dressed, dark‑skinned man with a shaved‑slick scalp. With whom, Vincent noticed, Michelangelo was now flirting. Vincent’s fingers curled on his glass, and he pressed his shoulders against the warm, slightly vibrating wall of the building, feeling it conform to his body.

The prime minister and her entourage occupied a space that was more or less on the left center of the ballroom, and somehow managed to give the impression of being off in a corner–and one diametrically opposed to the Pretoria household at that. And there was something else interesting: as Lesa crossed the room, nobody wanted to catch her eye, despite her occasional nods and words she shared with those she passed. Unobtrusively, a path opened before her, but it wasn’t the standing aside of respect. It was a withdrawal. I wonder what she is when she’s not a tour guide and turnkey.

He dug his toes into the groundcover and watched. People could give themselves away in the oddest manners. Even simply by the ways in which they made sure of their guard. For example, the faint discomfort with which Lesa responded to a broad‑shouldered, bronzed man who entrapped her a few steps from the relative haven of her mother’s enclave. He had long hair cut blunt at his shoulders, the fair, blondish‑brown color and coarse wavy texture even more unusual than Vincent’s auburn, and his hands were knotted whitely with old scars. He spoke softly, eyes averted, and Lesa reached out and tucked a strand of that wonderful hair behind his ear in a good counterfeit of flirtation before excusing herself to join her family.

Vincent was just finally getting around to paying some attention to his drink when the minister of Security–the one who had been about to bring biology into the dinner argument until Singapore shut her down–appeared at his elbow. “Miss Katherinessen,” she said, mispronouncing his name kath‑er‑in‑ES‑sen,“I’m sorry to see you’ve been abandoned.”

She held out her hand and he took it gingerly. The wine on her breath bridged the distance between them easily. The New Amazonian disregard for personal space, but also something more.

He would have stepped back, but he was already against the wall. “I’m self‑amusing,” he said, and met her gaze directly, the way Penthesilean men did not.

She edged closer, oozing confidence. She expected him to be intimidated and perhaps flattered as she laid her hand on his arm. He’d seen the expression on her face on enough old warhorses cornering sweet young things at embassy parties: a predator gloating over trapped prey.

He was supposed to blush and look down, and maybe sidle away. Instead, he pictured Michelangelo standing where he was standing now, and burst out laughing.

She stepped back, abruptly, covering her discomfiture with a scowl. “I wasn’t aware I was so amusing.”

“Actually,” Vincent said, stepping around her now that he’d bought himself room, “I find the corner by the door’s the best place to be. Are you attending the ceremony tomorrow, Elder?”

He turned to face her, which put his own back to the room–but that wasn’t too unsettling when Michelangelo had it covered. And now she was the one trapped against the wall, which was a tactical gain.

“I wouldn’t miss it,” she said. “We’ve arranged a meeting with some technical specialists afterward, who can explain what we’re prepared to offer for our part of the deal. I’m sure Lesa’s made sure you have a copy of the schedule.”

“She functions as a secretary, too?” Vincent asked with a thickly insincere smile. He stepped back as Kyoto stepped forward. Miss Pretoria was coming up behind him, and he sidestepped, as if accidentally, opening the tкte‑а‑tкte. One, two, three, four–“A multitalented individual.”

“Why, thank you, Miss Katherinessen,” Pretoria said, and then let her eyes rest on the minister of Security. “Oh, Elder. I didn’t see you back there, behind this great wall of a man. I’m sorry to interrupt, but his partner asked me to fetch him–”

She smiled, and Vincent wondered if the venom was as apparent to Kyoto as to him. Perhaps not, because Kyoto excused herself and brushed past them with every indication of calm.

Vincent tilted the glass against his mouth, inhaling redolence that stung his eyes, and smiled at the warden as he licked a droplet off the cleft of his lips. The liquor, now that he finally tasted it, was good, warm on the tongue. And if he wasn’t mistaken, it had enough kick to shift a moon in orbit.

He shifted the glass to his left hand to extend the right. He was adapting to thatlocal quirk, at least. Her clasp was still warm and firm. “I am indebted beyond words.”

“She’s good at her job,” Pretoria said.

“Did Angelo really send you to the rescue?” Vincent would have expected Michelangelo to take a special kind of lingering pleasure in watching him twist, actually, but he would take pity if it was on offer.

“I suggested to him that he–and you–might want to sneak downstairs and indulge in a little tourism…I mean, inspect the gallery space. What do you say?”

Vincent finished his drink. So Pretoria was avoiding the fair‑haired man, and Vincent’s own presumed desire to avoid Elder Kyoto was a convenient excuse. “Grab your security and let’s go.”

Kusanagi‑Jones glanced up as Vincent laid a gentle hand on his arm and insinuated himself into the conversational circle. “We’re escaping,” Vincent murmured against his ear, and Kusanagi‑Jones nodded while Miss Pretoria made excuses to her mother involving long trips and early rising.

“Whatever the warden wants,” Kusanagi‑Jones replied, using Vincent’s body to cover the shape of the words. Vincent steered him out of the group as he made his farewells. There was a scent of liquor and herbs on Vincent’s breath, and Kusanagi‑Jones sighed wistfully. “Don’t suppose you saved me any of that.”

“Sorry. We’ll get room service later.”

“They overcharge for the licenses in hotels.”

Vincent laughed under his breath and gave Kusanagi‑Jones’s arm a squeeze. “Miss Pretoria wants to show us the gallery.”

“That’s the wardento you,” she said, falling into step. She met Kusanagi‑Jones’s guilty look with a toss of her rainbow hair, but she grinned. “Oh, yes, I heard that.”

“Just as well,” Vincent said, releasing Kusanagi‑Jones’s arm after one more caress. “What do you do when you’re not shepherding visiting dignitaries, Warden?”

She shrugged. “You just met my boss. I’m security directorate. I review licensing for gentle males and others.”

“Political officer,” Vincent said. She wasn’t tall, but she moved with direction and strength. If she had been wearing boots, they would have been thumping on the groundcover. Even the security detail was hustling to keep up.

She flipped her hair behind her ear again. It kept escaping in ways a grooming license would not permit. “You could say that.”

The curved corridor opened into a bell‑shaped chamber. She selected a side corridor. Kusanagi‑Jones noticed she was running the tips of her fingers down the left‑hand wall. “Just here–”

Another room, this one long and narrow like a gallery. The walls were the faux‑transparent type, the ceiling view of a perfect, cloudless night sky.

“This is the museum?” Kusanagi‑Jones asked. “Where’s the art? Doesn’t the sunlight damage it?”

Miss Pretoria smiled, seeming pleased that he’d broken his silence, but she addressed them both as she waved them forward. “It’s downstairs,” she said. “Underground. Come along.”

Penthesilea looked small on the surface, but Kusanagi‑Jones had gained a hard‑won appreciation for how rarely appearances matched actuality. After the arena, he wasn’t surprised by the scale of the underground city.

They stepped from a lift into a cavernous space. The air here was cool, the illumination indirect, bright but soothing, with long splashes of light reflecting from scrollworked eggshell‑white walls. Vincent cleared his throat. After glancing at Miss Pretoria for permission, Vincent reached out and softly ran his hand over the decorations, if that was what they were. Kusanagi‑Jones resisted the urge, despite the tactile charm.

Vincent said, “If the original inhabitants–”

“The Dragons.”

“The Dragons. If they could fly, why the lift?”

“It’s new.”

“Do you understand the technology that well?” And Vincent made it sound casual, startled. Natural. Kusanagi‑Jones wondered if Pretoria was fooled.

Truthfully, though, he listened with only half an ear to the conversation. His attention was on the security detail, the multidimensional echoes caused by the cavern’s organic shapes, the possibility of an attack. He was surprised by how freely they were permitted to move; on Earth, there would have been an entourage, press, a gaggle of functionaries. Here, there was just the three of them, and the guards.

Convenient. Andindicative of even more societal differences that would be positively treacherous to navigate. As if the openly armed women hadn’t been enough of a hint.

“…this seems like a very fine facility,” Vincent said. He moved casually, his hands in his pockets as he leaned down to Miss Pretoria, diminishing her disadvantage in height. “Controlled humidity and temperature, of course.”

“Yes. These are the galleries that were emptied by the OECC robbers in the Six‑Weeks‑War,” she said. Her body language gave no hint that she considered any potential to offend in her phrasing. It was matter‑of‑fact, impersonal.

And this is a diplomat,Kusanagi‑Jones thought. He trailed one hand along the wall; the texture was soapy, almost soft. He imagined a faint vibration again, as before, but when he tuned to it, he thought it might just be the wind swaying the fluted towers so far overhead. They’ve been alone out here a very long time. Long enough that awareness of ethnocentrism is a historical curiosity.

He stroked the wall again, trying to identify the material. It didn’t come off on his fingers, but it felt like it should. Like graphite or soapstone–slick without actually being greasy. There was a geologist’s term, but he couldn’t remember it.

“These galleries?” Vincent said. “This is where the Coalition troops…”

“Were killed, yes.” Thissubject, Miss Pretoria seemed to understand might be touchy. “The ones who came to repatriate the art. And New Amazonia. Seven hundred. Give or take.”

“A ship’s complement of marines.”

“We warned them to withdraw. They attempted to disarm us.”

Kusanagi‑Jones glanced over in time to catch that predatory flash of her teeth once more. Vincent was watching her, his hands still in his pockets, his face calm.

“There’s been a lot of practical experiment on what happens after the occupiers disarm the locals. Just because we’ve disavowed Old Earth history doesn’t mean we fail to study it. You can file that one with sense of humor,if you like.”

Kusanagi‑Jones felt the thrum between them, Vincent and Pretoria. Her chin was up, defiant. Vincent stood there, breathing, smiling, for her to bash herself against. For a moment, Kusanagi‑Jones pitied her; she didn’t stand a chance. Vincent’s silences were even more devastating than his sarcasm.

He ended this one with a soft, beckoning gesture, something that invited Miss Pretoria into the circle of his confidences. “I don’t suppose you’d consent to tell me how you managed to herd or lure an entire ship’s complement into these chambers, Miss Pretoria? Just as a goodwill gesture, something to get negotiations off on a congenial foot?”

She tilted her head. “You never know when we might need it again. And speaking of goodwill gestures, do you have a list of the art treasures you’re returning?”

“One wasn’t sent ahead?”

“One was,” she answered. She started walking again. Vincent accompanied her and Kusanagi‑Jones fell in closer to the security detail. “But since we’ve planned that repatriation ceremony for tomorrow, it doesn’t hurt to make sure we’re all working from the same assumptions.”

Her tone made it plain she knew they weren’t, but was willing to play the game. Kusanagi‑Jones found himself admiring her a little. More than a little; she had sangfroid, an old‑fashioned haggler’s nerve. Maybe she’d known exactly what she was doing with that too‑sharp word robbers.

Her next comment clinched it. “If you’ll follow me,” she said, “I’ll show you some things that weren’tstolen.”

Vincent, surprising everyone except Kusanagi‑Jones, laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d heard in a week. Kusanagi‑Jones laughed, too. But he was laughing at the startled expression on Pretoria’s face. “About that sense of humor–”

She grinned, and he remembered the sharpness with which she’d returned the volley after overhearing the unflattering nickname. “You’re not going to tell me men have one, too?”

Vincent shot him a look; Kusanagi‑Jones answered with a shrug. They passed through three chambers, each one with soft full‑spectrum light and stairs ascending to a gallery, each with white walls bare and smooth as the walls of a chalk cave.

“How much did they take?” Vincent asked. Even hushed, his voice echoed into many‑layered resonance. “All this?”

“You don’t know?”

“I know what we brought. The lists I transferred.”

She smiled. “That’s maybe a twentieth of it–”

“The Christ.”

“Mmm. These vaults were on the surface then, public galleries. A museum. We brought what we could from Old Earth–”

“Women’s art,” Kusanagi‑Jones said, but he was thinking On the surface? All this?

She stopped and turned, her shoulders square and her chin lifted. She folded her hands behind her back. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“I wondered why your ancestors limited the collection.”

She gave him that smile again, the toothy one. “Somebody else was taking care of the rest.”

“You’re content with the bias?”

She turned and kept walking. Another half of one of the big rooms in silence, until she paused beside a wall like any other. She lifted her hand and pressed the palm against the surface. “Are you content with yours?”

Before he could answer, the wall scrolled open and a door created itself where there hadn’t been a door a moment before. She stepped through before the edges had finished collapsing seamlessly into themselves, and Kusanagi‑Jones had an awful moment of clarity. It came to him, lead‑crystal sharp, that he needed to be thinking of this city not as static structures, but as the biggest damned fog this side of a starship. But Vincent didn’t look worried, so Kusanagi‑Jones made sure he didn’t look worried either and followed Pretoria through the gap. He stopped so fast that Vincent ran into him.

The contents of this room were intact. It was a hundred meters long, with three galleried levels of well‑hung walls, plinths and stands scattered about the floor. He had taken three steps forward, sliding out from under Vincent’s steadying hand on his shoulder, before he even thought to turn and ask their warden for permission. Still smiling, she waved him forward. Vincent dogged him, and he couldn’t even be bothered to be offended when Pretoria called after him, “Don’t touch!” although he did growl something about being housebroken, under his breath.

He folded his hands ostentatiously in the small of his back, and tried to remember not to hold his breath. There were pieces here Michelangelo couldn’t even name, although he had–many years since–taken a class in the treasures that had been lost during Diaspora, and he’d chipped all the relevant records before he left Earth.

Vincent leaned over his shoulder, breath warm on his ear, resting a hand on his shoulder where the skin of his fingers could brush Michelangelo’s neck. It was scarcely a distraction. He paused in front of a case with a long, chain‑linked silver necklace, as much sculpture as it was jewelry, hung on a display rack like a barren branch. His chip told him the name.

“Matthesen,” he said, pointing with his chin so as not to give Pretoria an excuse to shoot him. “ Fear Death by Water. Supposed to be lost.” He knew the white marble miniature of a nude and pensive woman beside it without help. “Vinnie Ream Hoxie’s The Spirit of the Carnival. These must all be North American. That’s Jana Sterbak’s The Dress–”

Vincent didn’t even comment on the power required to keep the lights that shimmered words in archaic English burning across the wirework form. “That’s art?”

“Heathen,” Michelangelo said, more fondly than he intended. “Yes, it’s art. And oh…”

It caught his eye from across the room, a swirl of colors that seemed at first an amorphous form on a starry field, a nebula in dank earthen green and mahogany. A heavy tentacled brown arm reached from the upper left‑hand corner of the canvas, shoving at the sky like an oppressive hand. Michelangelo gasped with the power of it, the vault, the weight, the mass. Just paint on canvas, and after he practically ran across the room to it, it shoved him back a step.

Vincent, who had followed him, swallowed but didn’t speak.

“The Lawrence Tree,”Michelangelo said. He didn’t need to look at the plaque. “Georgia O’Keeffe.”

“I’ve heard of her,” Vincent said. He almost sounded surprised. “What’s this one?”

Michelangelo didn’t know. He waved a question at Pretoria.

The warden came to them, as if reluctant to shout now that they were thick in the spell of the gallery. “Saide Austin is the artist,” she said, and Michelangelo took a moment to appreciate the irony of a woman named after a city named after a man. “It’s called Jinga Mbande.”

It was wood, Michelangelo thought, darkly polished, the image of a well‑armed woman with upthrust breasts pointed like weapons, the strong curve of her belly hinting at fecundity. She held a primitive firearm in one hand, a spear in the other, and had the sort of classically African features that were rarely even seen on Earth anymore. “An Amazon heroine?”

“A freedom fighter,” Pretoria said. She stood silent on his left hand as Vincent waited on his right, and they all breathed in the silence of the rich gleam of light on polished wood. The air was cool and smelled faintly of lemon oil.

“Old Earth history,” she said then, and stepped away as if she needed to cut the camaraderie that had almost grown between them. “Follow me, and I’ll show you the friezes.”

They went. Up a spiral stair– neck‑breaking‑type,Vincent mouthed at him as they climbed–to the third and final gallery. As they reached the landing, Miss Pretoria about a dozen steps ahead of them, Kusanagi‑Jones leaned forward and whispered in Vincent’s ear, “If this is where the marines were killed, was Montevideo’s comment a veiled threat?”

Vincent coughed. “Pretty well‑cursed veiled.” And then he looked up and fell silent.

Kusanagi‑Jones hadn’t been prepared to be struck dumb again. You’d think you’d run out of awe eventually.And perhaps one would. But not right away.

The friezes, as Montevideo had so blithely called them, were a single long strip about three meters tall that ran the entire perimeter of the room. They had subtle detail and deep refractive color that washed to white when you weren’t looking at them directly, so they faded out as one glanced along their length, ghosts emerging and vanishing. At first he wasn’t sure if the images actually moved, but he occasionally stopped and stared at one detail or another, and became aware that the scene shifted, playing itself out in slow animation.

And he understood why the New Amazonians called the long‑lost native aliens Dragons.

The pictured creatures were feathered almost‑serpents, four‑limbed counting the wings and the legs that helped anchor the flight membranes. The wings were bony and double‑jointed, shaped for walking on and manipulating things as well as flight. The vane was stretched skin over an elongated pinkie finger that formed the longest part of the leading edge of the wing, five more fingers making a grasping appendage at the front of the joint. They were neither bat‑wings nor bird‑wings, despite the hairy feathers–or feathery fur–that covered the creatures’ backs and napes and heads.

The Dragons flocked through the spires of what must be one of the other cities of New Amazonia, because it was far taller and more towered than Penthesilea, and they raced clouds in jewel‑bright colors. The ones in the foreground were as detailed as Audubon paintings. The ones in the background were movement itself. In among them were wingless animals, four legged, like lean reptilian jackals. They reminded Michelangelo of some kind of feathered dinosaur, what a theropod would look like if it ran on all fours.

A scientist–an anthropologist or biologist–might have cautioned him against jumping to conclusions. But to Michelangelo, it was breathtakingly obvious that the winged animals were the city builders, the native inhabitants. Even if several of them did not hold objects in their hands that he tentatively identified as a light‑pen, a paintbrush, a chisel, the eyes would have given them away. They were all iris, shot through with threads of gold or green–but even in the thing the New Amazonians inadequately called a frieze,they were aware.

The Dragons towered three or four feet taller than he, even with their long necks ducked to fit into the frieze. They moved in the animation, the three humans the focus of their predatory attention. Michelangelo felt them watching, and it took the gallery railing across his lower back to make him realize that he had backed the entire width of the catwalk away.

6

AFTER THEY RETURNED TO THEIR ROOMS, MICHELANGELO took his time finishing his report to Kaiwo Maruand getting ready for bed. Vincent waited until he ordered the lights off and slid in beside him. He turned under the covers, cloth brushing his skin, and pressed himself against his partner’s back, draping an arm around Angelo’s waist. Michelangelo stiffened in the darkness.

“This is twice now,” Vincent said. “Are you going to tell me why you’re angry?” Again in their own private language, needlessly complicated, half implied and half tight‑beamed, the parts of speech haphazardly switched and vocabulary and syntax swiped from every language either one of them had encountered.

For a moment, he thought Michelangelo wouldn’t answer. But his hand covered Vincent’s, and he said, “Twice?”

“On Kaiwo Maruand at dinner. I can’t think what I said to anger you, but it must be something.” He kissed Angelo’s neck.

Michelangelo didn’t respond. Not even a shiver, and this time he let the silence drag. Vincent was just about to retreat to his own side of the bed when Michelangelo stretched, turning so their eyes could meet, the transmitted light of the nebula revealing his expression. Which, as usual, admitted nothing.

“If we’re going to work together–” –you have to talk to me.It was more than talking, though. He wanted what they had once had, the trust and the knowledge that Michelangelo would be where he was needed. And it was unfair to ask.

Vincentwas the one keeping secrets that could get them both killed. The betrayal had already happened, and Angelo inevitably was going to find out about it and have to live with the consequences. How many times are you going to make his choices for him?

Whatever lies Michelangelo was implying, they were for the job; he had made that plain on Kaiwo Maru.The smallest dignity Vincent could do in return was not to lie to Michelangelo about Vincent’s honorable intentions.

So Vincent leaned forward, instead, and kissed his partner. There was a moment of resistance as their wardrobes analyzed the situation, but as he’d suspected after Kaiwo Maru,they were still keyed to each other. Vincent had never changed his program, and apparently Michelangelo hadn’t either. The resistance faded, and Angelo took Vincent into his arms.

Sounds drifted into the room from outside, attenuated by height. Music, laughter. A woman singing, the nauseating reek of scorched flesh from some restaurant, people getting the jump on Carnival. The colored sky shone through the false skylights, filling the room with a faint glow. Michelangelo’s mouth opened. He kissed hard, well, fluently, his hands soft and warm on Vincent’s back. And Vincent…wished he believed.

Lesa undressed herself and hung her clothes up to air without bothering House to raise the lights. The night was cloudless and there was enough illumination through the ceiling that she had no problem maneuvering in her own bedroom. But it was dark enough that she was surprised to find the bed already occupied when she tugged the covers back.

Surprised, but not terribly so. “Hello, Robert.”

He was awake. He propped himself on his elbows, the sheets gliding down his chest, revealing curly hair. Glossy scars contrasted with the oiled smoothness of his scalp. His teeth flashed in the darkness. “I thought you’d be longer.”

She shrugged, and slid into bed beside him, rolling onto her stomach, voice muffled in the pillow. “Let me guess. I forgot to tell Agnes that I wanted you tonight?”

“She said to check in with her in the morning, because she thought you’d be late, too, and didn’t feel like waiting up. Arms down by your sides, please?”

His hands were strong; he slicked them down with the oil from the bedstand while she shrugged her nightshirt off, and started work on her shoulders first. Maybe not safe to give him so much autonomy, so much freedom. Maybe not wise to be as permissive with him as she was. But this was Robert, after all, and he was as much hers as he could be without a transfer and a marriage, and she trusted him more than any woman she knew.

She didn’t doubt his temper, or his capacity for violence. They were marked on his body, and his status as males figured such things was significant. But he’d never directed either of those things at her, or any woman.

Not gentle, no. But smart.

“Thank you,” he said.

Her spine cracked under his weight. “Mmph.” It might have stood a better chance of being a word if she hadn’t had a mouthful of pillow. Robert pulled the cushion out of the way, straightening her neck, and ran his thumbs down her spine, triggering a dizzying release of endorphins. “You heard something? Or is this a social call?”

“Would that it were, my lady.”

She laughed at his pretend formality. “It can be a social call, too.”

“Business first.” But the kiss he planted between her shoulder blades promised pleasant business, at least. He stayed bent down, nuzzling through her hair to brush his lips across her ear. “Did you meet the Colonials?”

“Yes. And yes, it’s them. Well, I’m as sure as I can be.”

“And what do you think? Can we trust Katherinessen?”

His hands forestalled her shrug. Flinty, dangerous hands, the gnarled scar across the palm of the left one rough when it caught on her skin. “Do we have another choice? I can’t tell, Robert. I don’t know. Claude won’t risk it. There’s no guarantee about Katherinessen. Kusanagi‑Jones is hard‑line Old Earth, though I don’t understand it and it makes me sick to think about, and Claude’s bound to think placating the Coalition is safer than open opposition, especially if it means allying ourselves with Coalition worlds in open revolt.”

“Appeasement has such a glorious history.”

“This isn’t about glory. And it worked for Ur. Sort of.”

“Which is why they’re so eager to be rid of the Governors now?”

His tone was arch and dry. She matched it. “Keep it in your pants, Robert.”

“I’m not wearing any pants,” he said reasonably.

Somewhere, she found the energy to snort. “Anyway, if Mother finds out I’ve been letting you read history, she’ll–”

“Have your hide for a holster. I know.” His caresses became more personal and she rolled over, looking up through the dark. He touched the tip of her nose. “What are you going to do?”

She shrugged, and sighed. “I’ll know tomorrow. If we miss the meeting, it’s not like we’ll get another chance–”

“No.” He kissed her. “Not in time for Julian, anyway.”

Kusanagi‑Jones was long past feeling guilt about lying. Conscience was one of the first things to go. If he’d ever had much of one to begin with, the job had burned it out. So it was with a certain amount of amusement that he identified the emotion he was feeling over telling the truth–as guilt. Well, a limited sort of truth, with the limitations carefully obscured, but still. Unmistakably the truth.

The fact that he was doing it selfishly didn’t enter into it, he told himself. The fact that Vincent was right, and what he really wanted was to punish–

Of course, Vincent only knew that because Kusanagi‑Jones wasn’t bothering to hide it. Pretoria had probably picked up on it, too, but with luck she’d think it was jealousy, male games.

Oh, hell.

An omission was as good as a lie, and he had told Vincent he’d chosen the therapy. He was justifying. Justifying, because if Vincent didn’t think Kusanagi‑Jones cared for him anymore, that was one less way Vincent could hurt him. Justifying, because if he hadn’tcared, if he was doing his job, then he was a much better actor than this. Justifying because he, Kusanagi‑Jones, deserved Vincent’s loathing and anger for other reasons entirely–reasons Kusanagi‑Jones was too good a Liar for Vincent to suspect, even years later.

Justifying, and it was the sort of thing, the sort of self‑delusion, that got you killed. He knew it.

And so did Vincent, apparently, because Vincent pushed against his hand and looked up, leaving an arc of moisture cooling on Kusanagi‑Jones’s skin. “Something’s wrong,” he said. “Or else I’m more out of practice than I thought.”

The dry tone, brittle enough to break an edge and cut yourself on. It still worked, too; Kusanagi‑Jones laughed, an honest laugh. Startled into it, though nothing Vincent said was surprising. It was just very Vincent,and Kusanagi‑Jones had been so deep in his own bout of self‑pity that he’d forgotten.

“Tired,” he said, not bothering to hide the fact that it was a lie.

Warm hands stroked his thighs. “Mmm. You were the one who said you didn’t need rest; you had chemistry.”

“Rub it in.” It could only be fraught if he let it. He was a professional. And Earthneeded what they had come for. The Coalition needed it; the Governors were ruthless in balancing population and consumption against their programmed limits. Even wind farms and geothermal caused impact. Action, reaction, as incontrovertible as thermodynamics. And–seemingly abrogating those laws–clean, limitless New Amazonian energy could change the fate of two dozen worlds.

And Kusanagi‑Jones needed their mission to fail. Or more precisely, heneeded a win–because he wasn’tVincent Katherinessen, and he wasn’t getting any younger, and accepting therapy had kept him his job, but it hadn’t done enough to lift the cloud after their last awful failure, the mess on New Earth. Kusanagi‑Jones needed a win.

And meanwhile, ethics and–sod it, humanity–demanded he take a fall. Just like New Earth. But a win here was the only way he could count on staying alive. The only way he might be allowed to stay with Vincent. It left him cold from throat to groin to think of losing that again.

Vincent had always been worth paying attention to in bed. And Vincent had noticed that he still wasn’t doing so. “Angelo,” he complained, “you’re thinking.”

“And that’s supposed to be your job?” Not quite Vincent’s dry snap, but enough. “Really want to know?”

Vincent nodded, his depilated cheek smooth on Kusanagi‑Jones’s skin. “I’ve no right to ask.”

Somehow, in their own private language, it was possible to talk. “You never came,” Kusanagi‑Jones said, as if his betrayal hadn’t happened. And as far as Vincent knew, it hadn’t. “I know. Unrealistic expectations. You couldn’t have come. Couldn’t have found me, and there was nowhere to run. Doesn’t help.”

Kusanagi‑Jones felt Vincent flinch. “I failed you.”

“Didn’t–”

“I did,” he said, as if he needed to. “But you took the therapy.”

“I did,” he said. Six months of biochemical and psychological treatments. Kusanagi‑Jones wouldn’t call it torture; they’d both experienced torture. Profoundly unpleasant. That was all. And he wouldn’t let his hands shake talking about it now. “They said I was a model patient. Very willing.”

Vincent tensed, shoulder against his thigh, the long muscles of his body tightening. “If this is–”

“Vincent,” he said, “I don’t want to lie to you.”

That shudder might have been relief, or pain. Or the flinch of a guilty conscience. But Vincent nodded and shifted his weight, moving back, pulling his warmth away. Kusanagi‑Jones stopped him, tightening his fingers on Vincent’s head.

“I can counterfeit anything,” he said, and waited for the realization to settle in. He knew it would, although it took longer than he expected. But he felt it take hold, felt Vincent understand what he meant, felt his grief turn to disbelief.

“You’re amazing,” Vincent said, quiet voice vibrating with excitement, suppressed laughter, his breath both warming and cooling Michelangelo’s skin. “A therapy team. A cursed therapy team. You beat reeducation. You son of a bitch.”

“S’what I do. Not just you who’s good at his job.”

Vincent shook his head. “I see why you would be mad at me.”

“It’s done.” And it was. Gone and past mending, but maybe leaving room. If Michelangelo decided Vincent was worth more than his ethics.

Michelangelo drew one knee up and pressed his palm into the coarse, rich nap of Vincent’s braids, urging silently. And Vincent, after a thoughtful pause, acquiesced.

Later, he slid over Michelangelo, lithe body warm as he straddled his hips, fumbling their bodies into connection before pinning Michelangelo’s hands to the bed. Fingers flexed through fingers and the sheets bunched in strangely materialways as Vincent exerted the strength that had always excited them both, and Michelangelo pushed back, spreading his arms to draw Vincent’s mouth down on his own. Vincent groaned, breath rasping, and Michelangelo slurped sweat off his neck–quickly, before his wardrobe could wick it away–and left banners of suck‑marks purpling on Vincent’s golden‑brown chest. The Gorgon’s radiance, bright as moonlight, cast diffuse shadows rather than razored ones, colors layered on Vincent’s skin like a Secunda sunset, and Vincent’s meticulous nails gouged crescents on the backs of Michelangelo’s hands.

It was good.

But it wasn’t what it had been. It couldn’t be; there was too much moving under the surface now, and Kusanagi‑Jones couldn’t set it aside. Vincent was a professional, but he wasn’t a Liar, and he was keeping back something. Once, Kusanagi‑Jones wouldn’t have minded. Once he would have known it was orders, and Vincent would tell him when he should.

But that had been before Kusanagi‑Jones learned just how badly he’d screw Vincent over, when it came down to orders. And not even official orders.

No. Orders on behalf of Free Earth, in opposition to the Cabinet.

Angel walks beside giants. The nearest is warm and smells sour, sweat and fear, but under the scent is the warmth and the familiar spices of home. Mama holds his hand to keep him close, but it isn’t needed; you couldn’t pry him from her side.

Her palm is cold and wet, and her hand is shaking. She calls him On‑hel,like she did, a pretty nickname. She shushes him. They come into a bright room and she picks him up, swings him off his feet and holds him close. Not balanced on her hip, but pressed to her chest, as if she can hide him in the folds of her wardrobe.

Someone says big words, words he doesn’t understand. They boom, amplified. They hurt his ears, and he hides his head in Mama’s breast. She cups a big palm against the back of his head, covering his ears, making the hurt go away. He knows not to cry out loud. He curls up tight.

Mama argues. Her arm around him is tight. But then someone else speaks. He says they won’t take the boy,and Mama staggers, as if someone has struck her a blow, and when he looks up she’s swaying with her eyes closed. “The boy is not to blame,” the man says, the man Angel’s never seen before. “The Governors say, let the punishment fit the crime.”

Then someone pulls Angel away from her, and she lets him go as if her arm has numbed. She turns away, her round brown face contracted. She seems caught midflinch.

He cries her name and reaches for her, but somebody has him, big arms and a confused moment of struggling against strength. He kicks. He’d bite, but whoever has him is wise to that trick. He’s held tight.

“Close your eyes, Angel,” Mama says, but he doesn’t listen. She’s not looking at him. He dreams his name the way she said it again, the fond short form nobody else has ever called him.

Whoever’s holding him says something, some words, but he’s screaming too loud to hear them, and then Mama takes a deep breath and nods, and there’s a pause, long enough that she opens her eyes and turns as if to see why what she was anticipating has not come to pass–

–and she falls apart.

She makes no sound. She doesn’t show pain or even squeak; the Governors are programmed to be humane. But one moment she is whole and alive and letting out a held breath and taking in another one to speak to him, and the next she pitches forward, boneless, her central nervous system disassembled. Within moments, the thing that was Angel’s Mama is a crumbling dune in the middle of a broad white empty floor, and the man who is holding him, too late, thinks to step back and turn Angel’s face away.

He already knows not to cry out loud. He couldn’t, anyway, because his breath won’t move.

The adult holding him soothes him, strokes him, but hesitates when he seems to feel no emotion.

He wasn’t too worried, the adult Kusanagi‑Jones understands. The boy was too young to understand what he’d seen, most likely. And everywhere, there are families that want children and are not permitted to have them.

Someone will take him in.

Angelo’s breathing awoke Vincent in the darkness. It was not slow and deep, but a staccato rhythm that Vincent had almost forgotten in the intervening years, and now remembered as if it were merely hours since the last time he lay down beside Michelangelo.

Angelo was a lucid dreamer. He had learned the trick in self‑defense, with Vincent’s assistance, decades before. Angelo could control his dreams as easily as he controlled his emotions. Just more irony that it turned out not to help the problem.

Because it didn’t stop the nightmares.

Vincent had hoped, half‑consciously, they might have eased over the passing years. But judging from Angelo’s rigid form in the bed, his fists clenched against his chest, his frozen silhouette and panting as if he bit back panicked sobs–

–they were worse.

“Angelo,” he said, and felt the bed rock as Angelo shuddered, caught halfway between REM atonia–the inhibition of movement caused by the shutdown of monoamines in the brain–and waking. “Angelo,”Vincent snapped, bouncing the bed in preference to the dangerous activity of shaking his partner.

Angelo’s eyelids popped open, dark irises gleaming with reflected colors. He gasped and pushed his head back against the pillow, sucking air as if he’d been dreaming of being strangled.

He might have been. All Vincent knew about the nightmares was that they were of things that had happened, or might have happened, and between them they had enough unpleasant memories for a year’s worth of bad dreams.

Vincent put his hand on Angelo’s shoulder; when he breathed out again he seemed calm. “Thank you,” he said. He closed his eyes and swallowed.

“Think nothing of it,” Vincent answered, and put his head down on the pillow again.

Lesa sat cross‑legged on the bed, a cup of tea steaming in her hands, her breakfast untouched on the tray beside her, and watched the Coalition diplomats disentangle themselves from the sheets. She had a parser‑translator running on their coded conversation of the night before, but it hadn’t been able to identify the language. It hadtossed out some possibles, based on cognates, but its inability to provide a complete translation was frustrating. It could put together a word here, a word there–Katherinessen, laughing, calling Kusanagi‑Jones a son‑of‑a‑bitchin plain Ozglish, not even com‑pat–and she got a sense that they were talking about personal history, some old hurt or illness that was tied to the hesitations in their sex.

Just the sort of thing you’d expect recently reunited long‑term lovers to discuss when they were safe under the covers, warm in each other’s arms. But something tugged her attention, something she couldn’t quite call an irregularity, but an…eccentricity. They were together, but strained–by history, she thought, secrets, and maybe the mission itself.

She smiled, watching Katherinessen unwind himself from the bed and pad across the carpetplant to the window, where some delicate tool rested in the sun, dripping tiny solar panels like the black leaves of an unlikely orchid.

Secrets. Of course, Katherinessen waskeeping secrets.

He rested his arm on the window ledge, squinting in the sunlight, and began to fuss with the interface on his implant. Recharging its battery, she realized, after a moment. Clever–and she thought it might have a system to capture the kinetic energy of his body when he moved. Meanwhile Kusanagi‑Jones checked something on his own implant, then stood and glided toward the bathroom. She shook herself free of her urge to watch him go about his morning routine; he wasn’t as pretty as Katherinessen, but he moved like a khir, all coiled muscle and liquid strength. Instead she stood, drank off her tea–kept hot by the mug–and clicked her fingers for Walter. The khir poked its head from the basket beside the door and stretched regally, long scale‑dappled legs flexing nonretractable claws among the carpetplant. Its earfeathers flickered forward and up, trembling like the fronds of a fern, and when it shook itself, dust motes and shreds of fluff scattered into the sunlight like glitter.

Lesa snapped her fingers again and crouched, holding out a piece of her scone. Walter trotted to her, dancing in pleasure at being offered a share of breakfast. It inspected the scone with nostrils and labial pits, then took it daintily between hooked teeth as long as Lesa’s final finger‑joint. She dusted the crumbs off the khir’s facial feathers, and it chirped, dropping more bits on the carpetplant. Standing, its nose was level with hers when she crouched.

She bumped its forehead with her hand, petting for a moment as it leaned into her touch, then stood and walked toward the fresher. The door irised into existence; the shower created itself around her. She hurried. She had things to accomplish before the repatriation, and it wasthe first of Carnival.

Vincent sat on the window ledge, wearing the simplest loose trousers and shirt he had licensed. He sweated under them, the rising sun warming the moist air on his back. His face and chest were cool; his body was breaking the air curtain, but it didn’t seem to disrupt the climate control.

“Angelo,” he called, loud enough to be heard over running water, “do you get the feeling we’re being watched?”

Michelangelo’s voice drifted over splashing. “Expect we wouldn’t be?”

Silly question, sarcastic answer, of course. But there was something picking at the edge of his senses. Something more than the knowledge that there were video and audio motes turned on them every moment. More unsettling than the knowledge that somewhere, a technician was dissecting last night’s lovemaking via infrared and voice‑stress.

Vincent frowned, imagining too vividly the expression on some cold‑handed woman’s face as she analyzed the catch in Michelangelo’s breath when he’d finally consented to thrust up into Vincent with that particular savagery. It was rare that Angelo allowed glimpses of the man under his armor. And Vincent worked for them, he did. He always had.

“Such a gentleman,” he called back as the water cut off, filing the shiver at the nape of his neck under deal with it later. The Penthesileans said their city was haunted, and Vincent did not wonder why. It wasn’t just the wind or the trembling in the walls when you brushed them with your hand.

Sound carried in these arched, airy chambers. Vincent’s first reaction was that they would be prohibitive to heat. Of course, that didn’t mean much at the equator, and they wouldcatch a breeze–but these were people so energy‑rich they let the tropical sunshine splash on their streets and skins unfiltered by solar arrays, like letting gold run molten down the gutters, uncollected.

He thought of Old Earth, her Governors and her painstakingly, ruthlessly balanced ecology, and sighed. If generating power were removed from the equation, that would leave agriculture and resources as the biggest impactors, and a utility fog was a very efficient use of material. One object, transfinite functions.

Michelangelo stepped out of the shower, making it Vincent’s turn. Their wardrobes could handle sweat and body odor, but bacterial growth and skin oil were beyond them. Besides, Vincent had an uneasy suspicion he was getting hooked on warm water flooding over his body. It was a remarkable sensation.

He kissed Michelangelo in passing, and keyed his wardrobe off before he stepped under the shower. Michelangelo would start complaining about the clothes Vincent had chosen for him soon enough, and then, if they hurried, they could make it to the docks and check out the cargo before their command appearance at breakfast and the repatriation ceremony.

“Angelo–” Hot water sluiced across Vincent’s neck, easing discomfort he hadn’t noticed. He checked his chemistry. He could afford an analgesic. And a mild stimulant. Something to tide him over until breakfast, where he hoped there would be coffee.

“Here.” He was in the fresher, his voice pitched soft and echoing slightly off the mirror as if he were leaned in close.

“I need an Advocate.”

Michelangelo’s silence was indulgence.

Vincent listened to the water fall for thirty seconds, and then said, “Kyoto. She never got to say her piece at dinner.”

“The terrifying old battleaxe? What topic?”

“Biological determinism. Can you do it?”

“Right.” Michelangelo cleared his throat. “The only significant natural predator that human women have is heterosexual men. The Amazonian social structure, with its strictures on male activity, has nothing to do with masculine intelligence or capability.”

“Good.” Vincent started to key a toiletry license, and saw a bar of soap resting in a niche in the wall. “Do you suppose this soap is animal fat?”

“Probably,” Michelangelo said, dropping his cheerfully didactic voice of Advocacy. “How’s it smell?”

“Nice.” But Vincent, having sniffed, put it down again and ran his hand under the water until his skin tingled. “So if it’s not that men suffer under reduced capacity, what’s it about?”

“Biology. Self‑defense. Reasonable precautions.”

“Keep going.”

“Traditionally, the responsibility for safety falls on the victim. Women are expected to defend themselves from predators. To act like responsible prey. Limit risks, not take chances. Not to go out alone at night. Not talk to strange men. Rely on their own, presumably domesticated men for protection from other feral men–in exchange for granting them property rights over the women in question.” He laughed. “How’s that?”

“And the New Amazonian system is superior in what way?”

“Punishes the potential predator and arms the potential victim. If men cannot control themselves, control will be instituted. Potential predators are caged, regulated.”

“But?”

Michelangelo fell silent again. Vincent heard the splash of water, the rustle of the towels. “What do I think, or what would Elder Kyoto say?”

“Kyoto.”

“It could have happened centuries ago, but women were soft,” Michelangelo said. “Too soft for revolution. Too willing to believe the best of men. Unwilling to punish all for the sins of many, so they took that onus on themselves, and endured the risks. And a certain percentage of human males acted the way some males of most species will act: infanticide, rape, kidnapping, and the general treatment of females as chattel.”

“And what do youthink?”

More quiet. The water cut off.

Vincent ducked his head out of the shower without rinsing the soap from his hair. “Angelo?”

Michelangelo was leaned against the wall, palms on either side of the mirror, inspecting the whites of his eyes. He turned around and set his backside on the basin between pale‑knuckled hands. “Think we’re all prey. And all predators, given half a chance. What about you?”

After a certain amount of trouble, Kii accesses the spaceship. Timeslip reveals emergent properties; the ship is namedKaiwo Maru, andKaiwo Maru will have been important to the resolution, eventually. The threads lead through her, swirl around her. They are altered when they cross her path, and tumble away in alien directions.

They are altered since the moment she arrived, and Kii understands the implications. This is a cusp. There are others such, that are collapsed. There will have been others again.

The Consent is that Kii examineKaiwo Maru . She uses a simple quantum computing engine, Bose‑Einstein condensates similar to the ones implanted in the encroaching bipeds. She is constructed of modular units, foglets, and is transfinitely adaptable.

And she is aware.

Kii is at first excited to find that she hosts consciousness. There’s more here than Kii has understood; the bipeds are more advanced than Kii could have realized.

But Kii comes to understand that the consciousnesses she hosts are problematic. They are intelligent, focused, with a developed and balanced value system. They are disinterested.

They have only goals and directives, and while they wait for the opportunity to carry out those directives and continue to achieve those goals, they play endless, complicated games.

They find Kii unremarkable. They are incurious.

They are intelligent, Kii decides, notesthelich . They have no art. Which perhaps means the bipeds are notesthelich either, if they are associated with these consciousnesses, which they call the Governors.

If they are notesthelich, not people…

That would simplify things.

7

THE DOCKS WERE TARRED WOOD, AN ARCHAIC EXTRAVAGANCE. Vincent kept wanting to crouch and run his fingers across the surface to verify the size of the logs. They were laid side by side, countertapered, each one meters in diameter at the base. The whole thing shivered faintly when the sea foamed around the pilings. The cargo pod–detached from the lighter, now–bobbed at the end of the pier, squeaking against the bumpers. Vincent was grateful for the hats that Miss Pretoria had had in her hand when she arrived that morning. If he’d been planning on going back to the OECC, he’d have made a note to get them to design licenses for headgear for future diplomats.

Michelangelo stood impassive on his left hand, two steps away and half a step behind. Miss Pretoria was on his right side, her security detail flanking the three of them. They’d taken a surface car here from the government center, a fuel‑cell vehicle. They must use the native power to compress hydrogen for charging it, instead of the processes that had led to such vehicles being banned on Old Earth. There was no tang of combustion products anywhere near the city, and his wardrobe reported clean air. Particulates were limited to dust and organics–skin flakes, pollen, microscopic organisms, the inevitable detritus of man and nature.

Vincent leaned closer to Miss Pretoria and asked, “What will you do when your population increases beyond the capacity of the remnant cities?”

“We haven’t even identified their limits yet. Our problem has been keeping our population on an up‑curve.”

“And yet, no eugenics laws.”

“Women who work historically have fewer children than those who don’t,” she said. “And we work veryhard. Many women get their Obligation out of the way as early as is legal, or don’t even bother with it if they don’t wantto head a household. Three babies isn’t a big investment for a man, but–biologically speaking–it’s an enormous one for a woman. At least until the children are crиched. Also, there’s the Trials. Only our best males breed, and they’re in demand.”

“Stud males,” Vincent said quietly.

Michelangelo glanced at him, and then at Miss Pretoria. “‘Gentle’ males don’t reproduce?”

“There are women who make arrangements. But we won’t stoop to intervention to conceive. And you won’t find a market for implants like yours here.” Her shrug bordered on a shudder.

“Moral objections to implanted tech?”

“After the first Assessment? I don’t know how you can walk around in a utility fog that could start disassembling your body anytime your Governors decide they’re done with you.”

Vincent raised an eyebrow. Michelangelo opened his mouth and shut it again. They walked quietly, the sea breeze ruffling the fine hairs on Vincent’s skin, the pier echoing with the cries of some white‑winged flying animal. Parallel evolution; it looked enough like an Old Earth tern that Michelangelo did a double‑take over the first one, but the rear limbs were feathered as well, and seemed to act as auxiliary wings. Vincent pointedly continued to say nothing when he saw them scavenging among buckets of offal lined up stinking at the quayside.

The reek was astounding. Vincent breathed through his mouth until they were out where the breeze off the bay blew away the worst, and Michelangelo gritted his teeth, swallowed hard, and touched his watch to adjust his blood chemistry. He’s doing that too much. But this wasn’t the time to say it.

The murmur of conversation swelled and dropped as they passed each cluster of bystanders–men and women, finally, although far more of the latter. Vincent stole sideways glances right back. Thesemen were tough looking, muscular, most of them strikingly scarred. They were dressed distinctively, trousers and vests, each of them wearing a leather bracelet on his left wrist with a brightly colored badge. “Household allegiance?” Vincent asked, nodding to the badges.

“License,” Miss Pretoria said.

Vincent bridled at the faint disapproval in her voice. So she doesn’t think they should be out on their own even with a tag in their ears?“For work, or transit?”

“Yes,” she said, eyes forward. “My own–that is to say, the male I plan to take with me when I found my household, when I can buy his contract from my mother–he’s street‑licensed, but doesn’t work. We don’t need the income.” She said it with a certain amount of pride, and Vincent thought of Old Earth men he’d heard say: but my wife doesn’t work, of course.

He shook his head. “These are laborers?”

She nodded as they passed a light security cordon and drew up before the cargo pod. “Usually, they’re of the household that operates the fishing boat.”

The pod had a massive hatchway for unloading, and a tight‑squeeze access port. Both were sealed. A woman standing by in a severe beige suit extended her hand. Vincent surreptitiously keyed his wardrobe to allow contact and met her handshake.

“Miss Ouagadougou,” Pretoria said. “Miss Katherinessen, Miss Kusanagi‑Jones.”

“A pleasure,” Miss Ouagadougou said, winning Vincent’s affection by entirely failing to notice that she was shaking hands with a man.

“Charmed,” Michelangelo said, sounding as if he meant it, and also shook her hand. She was slight and brown‑skinned, with a bit of desk‑job pudge, her gray‑streaked hair twisted into a straggling knot at the nape of her neck. She wore a weapon, just like every woman in Penthesilea, but the leather on the safety strap was cracked as if she didn’t oil or use it often.

“Miss Ouagadougou is one of our leading art historians,” Miss Pretoria said, standing aside. She gestured Vincent toward the sealed hatch on the pod.

He deferred, glancing at Michelangelo. “Angelo’s the expert on the team. I’ve got a layman’s knowledge, but he has a degree in art history from the University of Cairo, on Old Earth.”

Michelangelo’s slight smile reflected amusement as Miss Pretoria blinked at them, obviously conducting an abrupt field rearrangement of her assumptions. “I beg your pardon,” she said. “There’s room for all of us in the capsule.”

“That’s all right. I’ll stay outside.” Vincent folded his arms and pointed with his chin across the water, its serene blue surface transparent enough that he could see rippled golden sand underneath. Penthesilea sprawled and spiked behind him, embraced by the green crescent arms of the bay. In the shadow of his hat, the sun wasn’t even so bad. “It’s a beautiful day.”

Miss Pretoria stared at him for a moment, then nodded. “Don’t wander far. I’d hate to see you kidnapped by pirates. They have an eye for a pretty man.”

“Pirates?” Of course, where there was shipping, there was piracy, but…

“Even New Amazonia has terrorists and renegades,” she said. “By the way, should you have the opportunity to be kidnapped by radicals, you’d rather fall in with the Right Hand Path than with Maenads, if you get the choice.”

Vincent laughed. “I won’t pass the security cordon.” Miss Ouagadougou’s eyes flicked sideways, her lips tightening as if she was about to say something, and Vincent wondered exactly what it might be. Regarding the Right Hand Path, by the timing of her gesture. Michelangelo also shot him a look, and Vincent returned it. Of course I have an ulterior motive. Run with it.

Michelangelo nodded, took the handoff, and turned away, ducking to murmur in the historian’s ear before he produced the key for the cargo pod’s seal. She laughed, bubbling excitement and enthusiasm, almost vibrating with her eagerness to run her gaze over the treasures.

They filed inside, leaving the door open, and Vincent sighed in an unanticipated intensity of relief. Alone at last,he thought, self‑mocking, and leaned against a piling, tilting his hat forward to produce a little more shade. To anyone observing, he might have seemed to be drowsing in the sun, halfheartedly watching the bustle the length of the pier.

He wasn’t surprised to see a man he recognized from the reception round the pilings at the land end of the pier and walk up the path between bustling fisherwomen, obviously intent on the cargo pod. The man was dressed like the laborers, although his trousers and vest were of better quality, embroidered, and the badge on his left wrist looked more elaborately decorated. His shaven head gleamed black as basalt under the heat of the sun, and he was big and fit, but none of that was unusual. Neither the scars pale against his complexion nor the swagger in his stride set him apart among Penthesilean men.

What startled Vincent was the man’s companion; a leggy teal‑green‑and‑gold‑dappled animal, maybe sixty kilos, all long bones and prancing angles under the windblown fuzziness of what was either a pelt or hairlike feathers. One of the raptor‑creatures from the Dragon’s frieze, it looked more predatory in the flesh. Two large front‑facing eyes would provide binocular hunter’s vision, sheltered under fluffy projecting eyebrows. Something like a moth’s fronded antennae protruded from the top of its long head, and its limbs, muzzle, and belly were scaled, a sleek contrast to the warm‑looking fluff on its back.

“Pets,” Vincent said, under his breath, watching the way the beast leaned its shoulder on the man’s thigh as they moved down the pier. “They have pets.”

Well, of course. They ate animal flesh, and while some of it must be harvested from the wild–witness the bustle and the stench of death on this pier–they also must have domestic animals. And it was a short step from one perversion to another, from enslaving animals for their meat to enslaving them as toys.

Vincent kept his face carefully calm in the dappled shade of his hat, and swallowed to fight the taste of bile.

And this is better than the Governors?The beast nosed the man’s hand as they paused by the security cordon and the man rewarded it with a quick ruffle of its feathers. It was like watching a grown man in diapers; the process of infantilization was complete. There was no way an animal so crippled could have a life outside of human control.

This is what we are when we’re left to our own devices–savage, selfish, short‑sighted.Vincent squared his shoulders, thought of Michelangelo, and frowned. But free. Any government founded on a political or religious agenda more elaborate than “protect the weak, temper the strong” is doomed to tyranny,he quoted silently, and made himself look away from the tame animal. He slipped an etched‑carbon data chip no larger than his thumbnail out of his pocket and concealed it in his lightly sweating palm. It was steady‑state material, not a fog, and fiendishly expensive, but there were too many security risks entailed in using his watch to transport data as sensitive as this. And he could afford it with his mother footing the bill.

They’d have to make the trade quickly, invisibly, without detection by the security agents, Michelangelo, or Miss Pretoria. The New Amazonian habit of indiscriminate handshaking proved itself useful for once.

Vincent checked his watch as the black‑skinned stranger showed the security guards his license, displayed a data pad of archaic design, and was waved through. No doubt, he was ferrying a message for Miss Pretoria or Miss Ouagadougou.

Eight hundred hours, as arranged.

Right on time.

Lesa hung back by the hatch, inside the cool darkness of the shuttle, and watched Nkechi Ouagadougou and Michelangelo Kusanagi‑Jones code‑key open cargo lockers with the sort of reverence she associated with wrapping a funeral shroud. Lesa herself wasn’t an artist or a scientist. Her aesthetic sense was limited. If it weren’t for her empathic gift, if her foremothers hadn’t had the resources for Diaspora and she’d been born on Earth, she’d have been Assessed.

But as Ouagadougou and Kusanagi‑Jones paused before each freshly opened chamber and waited for the utility fog that served as packing material to fade to transparency, she could feel their awe. It rolled off them in bittersweet cataracts, Kusanagi‑Jones’s flavored with a faint reluctance and Ouagadougou’s dripping eagerness. It was a held‑breath sort of moment for both of them, and Lesa didn’t want to intervene.

Besides, enjoyable as the overflow of their quiet glee was, she was only pretending to watch them. Practically speaking, she was watching Katherinessen. And Robert, who paused beside the step up to the door to introduce himself. They shook hands–Lesa’s smile never showed–and Katherinessen’s hand slipped back into his pocket. “They’re inside,” he said. Quietly, but his voice was crisp enough to carry.

Robert bowed, his manners impeccable, and glanced at the hatch. Lesa knew she was invisible in the darkness within. She stepped forward so the light would catch on her cheekbones and held out her hand. “Hello, dear.”

He didn’t step inside the pod, just held out a datacart and bowed as she accepted it. Something else fell into her palm–a chip, which had been pinned between his thumb and the cart. She flipped her hand over, opening the cart. “Anything important?”

He looked demure, or a convincing approximation. “Elder Elena Pretoria sends her regards,” he said, folding his hands behind his back. “And requests her daughter inquire as to whether the emissaries would consent to join the household for supper and Carnival tonight in the absence of other plans.”

Lesa thumbed the cart and slipped the chip into her pocket casually with the opposite hand. “All I can do is ask.”

Michelangelo swung down from the pod in a state of elation, feeling light and taut enough that he actually checked his chemistry to make sure it wasn’t a malfunction. The twin expressions of concern that Vincent and Miss Pretoria wore stopped him short before he was firmly grounded. His foot skipped on the wood underfoot, and he reached up and tilted his borrowed hat to cut the glare.

“Problem.” His eyes were on Vincent, but it was Miss Pretoria who answered.