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  Lindsay glided downward. The ultralight’s wire struts sang with tension.

  To the north, on the second of the Zaibatsu’s three land panels, he saw the work of sundogs. Refugees had stripped and demolished wide swaths of the industrial sector and erected crude airtight domes from the scrap.

  The domes ranged from small bubbles of inflated plastic, through multicolored caulked geodesics, to one enormous isolated hemisphere.

  Lindsay circled the largest dome closely. Black insulation foam covered its surface. Mottled lunar stone armored its lower rim. Unlike most of the other domes, it had no antennae or aerials.

  He recognized it. He’d known it would be here.

  Lindsay was afraid. He closed his eyes and called on his Shaper training, the ingrained strength of ten years of psychotechnic discipline.

  He felt his mind slide subtly into its second mode of consciousness. His posture altered, his movements were smoother, his heart beat faster. Confidence seeped into him, and he smiled. His mind felt sharper, cleaner, cleansed of inhibitions, ready to twist and manipulate. His fear and his guilt faltered and warped away, a tangle of irrelevance.

  As always, in this second state, he felt contempt for his former weakness. This was his true self: pragmatic, fast-moving, free of emotional freight.

  This was no time for half measures. He had his plans. If he was to survive here, he would have to take the situation by the throat.

  Lindsay spotted the building’s airlock. He brought the ultralight in for a skidding landing. He unplugged his credit card and stepped off. The aircraft sprang into the muddy sky.

  Lindsay followed a set of stepping-stones into a recessed alcove in the dome’s wall. Inside the recess, an overhead panel flicked into brilliant light. To his left, in the alcove’s wall, a camera lens flanked an armored videoscreen. Below the screen, light gleamed from a credit-card slot and the steel rectangle of a sliding vault.

  A much larger sliding door, in the interior wall, guarded the airlock. A thick layer of undisturbed grit filled the airlock’s groove. The Nephrine Black Medicals were not partial to visitors.

  Lindsay waited patiently, rehearsing lies.

  Ten minutes passed. Lindsay tried to keep his nose from running. Suddenly the videoscreen flashed into life. A woman’s face appeared.

  “Put your credit card in the slot,” she said in Japanese.

  Lindsay watched her, weighing her kinesics. She was a lean, dark-eyed woman of indeterminate age, with close-cropped brown hair. Her eyes looked dilated. She wore a white medical tunic with a metal insignia in its collar: a golden staff with two entwined snakes. The snakes were black enamel with jeweled red eyes. Their open jaws showed hypodermic fangs.

  Lindsay smiled. “I haven’t come to buy anything,” he said.

  “You’re buying my attention, aren’t you? Put in the card.”

  “I didn’t ask you to appear on this screen,” Lindsay said in English. “You’re free to sign off at any time.”

  The woman stared at him in annoyance. “Of course I’m free,” she said in English. “I’m free to have you hauled in here and chopped to pieces. Do you know where you are? This isn’t some cheap sundog operation. We’re the Nephrine Black Medicals.”

  In the Republic, they were unknown. But Lindsay knew of them from his days in the Ring Council: criminal biochemists on the fringes of the Shaper underworld. Reclusive, tough, and vicious. He’d known that they had strongholds: black laboratories scattered through the System. And this was one of them.

  He smiled coaxingly. “I would like to come in, you know. Only not in pieces.”

  “You must be joking,” the woman said. “You’re not worth the credit it would cost us to disinfect you.”

  Lindsay raised his brows. “I have the standard microbes.”

  “This is a sterile environment. The Nephrines live clean.”

  “So you can’t come in and out freely?” said Lindsay, pretending surprise at the news. “You’re trapped in there?”

  “This is where we live,” the woman said. “You’re trapped outside.”

  “That’s a shame,” Lindsay said. “I wanted to do some recruiting here. I was trying to be fair.” He shrugged. “I’ve enjoyed our talk, but time presses. I’ll be on my way.”

  “Stop,” the woman said. “You don’t go until I say you can go.”

  Lindsay feigned alarm. “Listen,” he said. “No one doubts your reputation. But you’re trapped in there. You’re of no use to me.” He ran his long fingers through his hair. “There’s no point in this.”

  “What are you implying? Who are you, anyway?”

  “Lindsay.”

  “Lin Dze? You’re not of oriental stock.”

  Lindsay looked into the lens of the camera and locked eyes with her. The impression was hard to simulate through video, but its unexpectedness made it very effective on a subconscious level. “And what’s your name?”

  “Cory Prager,” she blurted. “Doctor Prager.”

  “Cory, I represent Kabuki Intrasolar. We’re a commercial theatrical venture.” Lindsay lied enthusiastically. “I’m arranging a production and I’m recruiting a cast. We pay generously. But, as you say, since you can’t come out, frankly, you’re wasting my time. You can’t even attend the performance.” He sighed. “Obviously this isn’t my fault. I’m not responsible.”

  The woman laughed unpleasantly. Lindsay had grasped her kinesics, though, and her uneasiness was obvious to him. “You think we care what they do on the outside? We have a seller’s market cornered here. All we care about is their credit. The rest is of no consequence.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that. I wish other groups shared your attitude. I’m an artist, not a politician. I wish I could avoid the complications as easily as you do.” He spread his hands. “Since we understand each other now, I’ll be on my way.”

  “Wait. What complications?”

  “It’s not my doing,” Lindsay hedged. “It’s the other factions. I haven’t even finished assembling the cast, and already they’re plotting together. The play gives them a chance to negotiate.”

  “We can send out our monitors. We can watch your production.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Lindsay said stiffly. “We don’t allow our plays to be taped or broadcast. It would spoil our attendance.” He was rueful. “I can’t risk disappointing my cast. Anyone can be an actor these days. Memory drugs make it easy.”

  “We sell memory drugs,” she said. “Vasopressins, carbolines, endorphins. Stimulants, tranquilizers. Laughers, screamers, shouters, you name it. If there’s a market for it, the Nephrine black chemists can make it. If we can’t synthesize it, we’ll filter it from tissue. Anything you want. Anything you can think of.” She lowered her voice. “We’re friends with Them, you know. The ones beyond the Wall. They think the world of us.”

  Lindsay rolled his eyes. “Of course.”

  She looked offscreen; he heard the rapid tapping of a keyboard. She looked up. “You’ve been talking to the whores, haven’t you? The Geisha Bank.”

  Lindsay looked cautious. The Geisha Bank was new to him. “It might be best if I kept my dealings confidential.”

  “You’re a fool to believe their promises.”

  Lindsay smiled uneasily. “What choice do I have? There’s a natural alliance between actors and whores.”

  “They must have warned you against us.” The woman put a pair of headphones against her left ear and listened distractedly.

  “I told you I was trying to be fair,” Lindsay said. The screen went silent suddenly and the woman spoke rapidly into a pinhead microphone. Her face flashed offscreen and was replaced by the wrinkle-etched face of an older man. Lindsay had a brief glimpse of the man’s true appearance—white hair in spiky disarray, red-rimmed eyes—before a video-manicuring program came on line. The program raced up the screen one scan line at a time, subtly smoothing, deleting, and coloring.

  “Look, this is useless,” Lindsay blustered. “Don’t t
ry to talk me into something I’ll regret. I have a show to put on. I don’t have time for this—”

  “Shut up, you,” the man said. The steel vault door slid open, revealing a folded packet of transparent vinyl. “Put it on,” the man said. “You’re coming inside.”

  Lindsay unfolded the bundle and shook it out. It was a full-length decontamination suit. “Go on, hurry it up,” the Black Medical insisted. “You may be under surveillance.”

  “I hadn’t realized,” Lindsay said. He struggled into the booted trousers. “This is quite an honor.” He tunneled into the gloved and helmeted top half of the suit and sealed the waist.

  The airlock door shunted open with a scrape of grit. “Get in,” the man said. Lindsay stepped inside, and the door slid shut behind him.

  Wind stirred the dust. A light, filthy rain began to fall. A skeletal camera robot minced up on four tubular legs and trained its lens on the door.

  An hour passed. The rain stopped and a pair of surveillance craft kited silently overhead. A violent dust storm blew up in the abandoned industrial zone, to the north. The camera continued to watch.

  Lindsay emerged from the airlock, weaving a little. He set a black diplomatic bag on the stone floor beside him and struggled out of the decontamination suit. He stuffed the suit back into the vault, then picked his way with exaggerated grace along the stepping-stones.

  The air stank. Lindsay stopped and sneezed. “Hey,” the camera said. “Mr. Dze. I’d like a word with you, Mr. Dze.”

  “If you want a part in the play you’ll have to appear in person,” Lindsay said.

  “You astonish me,” the camera remarked. It spoke in trade Japanese. “I have to admire your daring, Mr. Dze. The Black Medicals have the foulest kind of reputation. They could have rendered you for your body chemicals.”

  Lindsay walked north, his flimsy shoes scuffing the mud. The camera tagged after him, its left rear leg squeaking.

  Lindsay descended a low hill into an orchard where fallen trees, thick with black smut, formed a loose, skeletal thicket. Below the orchard was a scum-covered pond with a decayed teahouse at its shore. The once-elegant wooden and ceramic building had collapsed into a heap of dry rot. Lindsay kicked one of the timbers and broke into a coughing fit at the explosion of spores. “Someone ought to clean this up,” he said.

  “Where would they put it?” the camera said.

  Lindsay looked around quickly. The trees screened him from observation. He stared at the machine. “Your camera needs an overhaul,” he said.

  “It was the best I could afford,” the camera said.

  Lindsay swung his black bag back and forth, narrowing his eyes. “It looks rather slow and frail.”

  The robot prudently stepped backward. “Do you have a place to stay, Mr. Dze?”

  Lindsay rubbed his chin. “Are you offering one?”

  “You shouldn’t stay in the open. You’re not even wearing a mask.”

  Lindsay smiled. “I told the Medicals that I was protected by advanced antiseptics. They were very impressed.”

  “They must have been. You don’t breathe raw air here. Not unless you want your lungs to end up looking like this thicket.” The camera hesitated. “My name is Fyodor Ryumin.”

  “I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” Lindsay said in Russian. They had injected him with vasopressin through the suit, and his brain felt impossibly keen. He felt so intolerably bright that he was beginning to crisp a little around the edges. Changing from Japanese to his little-used Russian felt as easy as switching a tape.

  “Again you astonish me,” the camera said in Russian. “You pique my curiosity. You understand that term, ‘pique’? It’s not common to trade Russian. Please follow the robot. My place isn’t far. Try to breathe shallowly.”

  Ryumin’s place was a small inflated dome of gray-green plastic near the smeared and broken glass of one window panel. Lindsay unzipped the fabric airlock and stepped inside.

  The pure air within provoked a fit of coughing. The tent was small, ten strides across. A tangle of cables littered the floor, connecting stacks of battered video equipment to a frayed storage battery propped on ceramic roof tiles. A central support pole, wreathed in wire, supported an air filter, a lightbulb, and the roots of an antenna complex.

  Ryumin was sitting cross-legged on a tatami mat with his hands on a portable joystick. “Let me take care of the robot first,” he said. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

  Ryumin’s broad face had a vaguely Asiatic cast, but his thinning hair was blond. Age spots marked his cheeks. His knuckles had the heavy wrinkles common to the very old. Something was wrong with his bones. His wrists were too thin for his stocky body, and his skull looked strangely delicate. Two black adhesive disks clung to his temples, trailing thin cords down his back and into the jungle of wires.

  Ryumin’s eyes were closed. He reached out blindly and tapped a switch beside his knee. He peeled the disks from his temples and opened his eyes. They were bright blue.

  “Is it bright enough in here?” he said.

  Lindsay glanced at the bulb overhead. “I think so.”

  Ryumin tapped his temple. “Chip grafts along the optic nerves,” he said. “I suffer a little from video burn. I have trouble seeing anything not on scan lines.”

  “You’re a Mechanist.”

  “Does it show?” Ryumin asked, ironically.

  “How old are you?”

  “A hundred and forty. No, a hundred and forty-two.” He smiled. “Don’t be alarmed.”

  “I’m not prejudiced,” Lindsay said falsely. He felt confusion, and, with that, his training seeped away. He remembered the Ring Council and the long, hated sessions of anti-Mech indoctrination. The sense of rebellion recalled him to himself.

  He stepped over a tangle of wires and set his diplomatic bag on a low table beside a plastic-wrapped block of synthetic tofu. “Please understand me, Mr. Ryumin. If this is blackmail, you’ve misjudged me. I won’t cooperate. If you mean me harm, then do it. Kill me now.”

  “I wouldn’t say that too loudly,” Ryumin cautioned. “The spyplanes can burn you down where you stand, right through that tent wall.”

  Lindsay flinched.

  Ryumin grinned bleakly. “I’ve seen it happen before. Besides, if we’re to murder each other, then you should be killing me. I run the risks here, since I have something to lose. You’re only a fast-talking sundog.” He wrapped up the cord of his joystick. “We could babble reassurances till the sun expands and never convince each other. Either we trust each other or we don’t.”

  “I’ll trust you,” Lindsay decided. He kicked off his mud-smeared shoes.

  Ryumin rose slowly to his feet. He bent to pick up Lindsay’s shoes, and his spine popped loudly. “I’ll put these in the microwave,” he said. “When you live here, you must never trust the mud.”

  “I’ll remember,” Lindsay said. His brain was swimming in mnemonic chemicals. The drugs had plunged him into a kind of epiphany in which every tangled wire and pack of tape seemed of vital importance. “Burn them if you want,” he said. He opened his new bag and pulled out an elegant cream-colored medical jacket.

  “These are good shoes,” Ryumin said. “They’re worth three or four minutes, at least.”

  Lindsay stripped off his coveralls. A pair of injection bruises mottled his right buttock.

  Ryumin squinted. “I see you didn’t escape unscathed.”

  Lindsay pulled out a pair of creased white trousers. “Vasopressin,” he said.

  “Vasopressin,” Ryumin mused. “I thought you had a Shaper look about you. Where are you from, Mr. Dze? And how old are you?”

  “Three hours old,” Lindsay said. “Mr. Dze has no past.”

  Ryumin looked away. “I can’t blame a Shaper for trying to hide his past. The System swarms with your enemies.” He peered at Lindsay. “I can guess you were a diplomat.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Your success with the Black Medicals. Your
skill is impressive. Besides, diplomats often turn sundog.” Ryumin studied him. “The Ring Council had a secret training program for diplomats of a special type. The failure rate was high. Half the alumni were rebels and defectors.”

  Lindsay zipped up his shirt.

  “Is that what happened to you?”

  “Something of the sort.”

  “How fascinating. I’ve met many borderline posthumans in my day, but never one of you. Is it true that they enforced an entire second state of consciousness? Is it true that when you’re fully operational, you yourself don’t know if you’re speaking the truth? That they used psychodrugs to destroy your capacity for sincerity?”

  “Sincerity,” Lindsay said. “That’s a slippery concept.”

  Ryumin hesitated. “Are you aware that your class is being stalked by Shaper assassins?”

  “No,” Lindsay said sourly. So it had come to this, he thought. All those years, while the spinal crabs burned knowledge into every nerve. The indoctrinations, under drugs and brain taps. He’d gone to the Republic when he was sixteen, and for ten years the psychotechs had poured training into him. He’d returned to the Republic like a primed bomb, ready to serve any purpose. But his skills provoked panic fear there and utter distrust from those in power. And now the Shapers themselves were hunting him. “Thank you for telling me,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t worry,” Ryumin said. “The Shapers are under siege. They have bigger concerns than the fate of a few sundogs.” He smiled. “If you really took that treatment, then you must be less than forty years old.”

  “I’m thirty. You’re a cagey old bastard, Ryumin.”

  Ryumin took Lindsay’s well-cooked shoes out of the microwave, studied them, and slipped them on his own bare feet. “How many languages do you speak?”

  “Four, normally. With memory enhancement I can manage seven. And I know the standard Shaper programming language.”

  “I speak four myself,” Ryumin said. “But then, I don’t clutter my mind with their written forms.”

  “You don’t read at all?”

  “My machines can do that for me.”