Текст книги "Carnival"

Автор книги: Elizabeth Bear

Соавторы: Elizabeth Bear
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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.