the diffuse lights of the city seeping in through a window. Stone has multiplied his vision, the better to admire the naked glowing form of June beside him. He has found that colors grow muddy in the absence of enough photons, but that a very vivid black-and white image can be had. He feels like a dweller in the past century, watching a primitive film. Except that June is very much alive beneath his hands.
June’s body is a tracery of lambent lines, like some arcane capillary circuitry in the core of Mao/K’ung Futzu. Following the current craze, she has had a subdermal pattern of microchannels implanted. The channels are filled with synthetic luciferase, the biochemical responsible for the glow of fireflies, which she can now trigger at will. In the afterglow of their lovemaking, she has set herself alight. Her breasts are whorls of cold fire, her shaven pubic mound a spiral galaxy dragging Stone’s gaze into illimitable depths.
June is speaking in a abstracted way of her life before Stone, pondering the ceiling while he idly strokes her.
“My mother was the only surviving child of two refugees. Vietnamese. Came to America shortly after the Asian War. Did the only thing they knew how to do, which was fish. They lived in Texas, on the Gulf. My mother went to college on a scholarship. There she met my father, who was another refugee of sorts. He left Germany with his parents after its Reunification. They said the compromise government was neither one thing nor the other, and they couldn’t deal with it. I guess my background is some sort of microcosm of a lot of the upheavals of our times.”
She catches Stone’s hand between her knees and holds it tightly. “But I feel a calmness with you right now, Stone.”
As she continues to speak of things she has seen, people she has known, her career as Citrine’s personal assistant, the oddest feeling creeps over Stone. As her words integrate themselves into his growing picture of the world, he feels the same abyssmal tidal suck that he first felt upon learning of history
Before he can decide consciously if he even wants to know or not, he finds himself saying, “June. How old are you?”
She falls silent. Stone watches her staring blindly at him, unequipped with his damned perceptive eyes.
“Over sixty,” she finally says. “Does it matter?”
Stone finds he cannot answer, does not know if her age does matter or not.
Slowly June wills her glowing body dark.
* * * *
Stone bitterly amuses himself with what he likes to think of as his art.
Perusing the literature on the silicon chip that dwells in his skull, he found that it has one property not mentioned by the doctor. The contents of its RAM can be squirted in a signal to a stand-alone computer. There the images he has collected may be displayed for all to see. What is more, the digitized images may be manipulated, recombined with themselves or with stock graphics, to form entirely lifelike pictures of things that never existed. These, of course, may be printed off.
In effect, Stone is a living camera and his computer a complete studio.
Stone has been working on a series of images of June. The color printouts litter his quarters, hung on wall and underfoot.
June’s head on the Sphinx’s body. June as La Belle Dame Sans Merci. June’s face imposed upon the full moon, Stone asleep in a field as Endymion
The portraits are more disturbing than soothing, and, Stone senses, quite unfair. But Stone feels that he is gaining some therapeutic effect from them, that each day he is inching closer to his true feelings for June.
He still has not spoken to Alice Citrine. That nags him greatly. When will he deliver his report? What will he say?
The problem of when is solved for him that afternoon. Returning from one of the tower’s private gyms, he finds his terminal flashing a message.
Citrine will see him in the morning.
* * * *
Alone this second time, Stone stands on the plate before Alice Citrine’s room, allowing his identity to be verified. He hopes the results will be shared with him when the machine finishes, for he has no idea of who he is.
The door slides into the wall, a beckoning cavern mouth.
Avernus, Stone thinks, and enters.
Alice Citrine remains where she sat so many event-congested weeks ago, unchanged, seemingly sempiternal. The screens flicker in epileptic patterns on three sides of her instrumented chair. Now, however, she ignores them, her eyes on Stone, who advances with trepidation.
Stone stops before her, the console an uncrossable moat between them. He notes her features this second time with a mix of disbelief and alarm. They seem to resemble his newly fleshed-out face to an uncanny degree. Has he come to look like this woman simply by working for her? Or does life outside the Bungle stamp the same harsh lines on everyone?
Citrine brushes her hand above her lap, and Stone notices her pet curled in the valley of her brown robe, its preternaturally large eyes catching the colors on the monitors.
“Time for a preliminary report, Mr. Stone,” she says. “But your pulse rate is much too high. Relax a bit—everything does not hinge on this one session.”
Stone wishes he could. But there is no offer of a seat, and he knows that what he says will be judged.
“So—what do you feel about this world of ours, which bears the impress of myself and others like me?”
The smug superiority in Citrine’s voice drives all caution from Stone’s thoughts, and he nearly shouts, “It’s unfair.” He pauses a moment, and then honesty forces him to admit, “Beautiful, gaudy, exciting at times—but basically unfair.”
Citrine seems pleased at his outburst. “Very good, Mr. Stone. You have discovered the basic contradiction of life. There are jewels in the dung heap, tears amid the laughter, and how it is all parceled out, no one knows. I’m afraid I cannot shoulder the blame for the world’s unfairness, though. It was unfair when I was a child, and remained unfair despite all my actions. In fact, I may have increased the disparity a little. The rich are richer, the poor seemingly poorer by comparison. But still, even the titans are brought down by death in the end.”
“But why don’t you try harder to change things?” Stone demands. “It has to be within your power “
For the first time, Citrine laughs, and Stone hears an echo of his own sometimes bitter caw “Mr. Stone, “ she says, “I have all I can do to stay alive. And I do not mean taking care of my body—that is attended to automatically. No, I mean avoiding assassination. Haven’t you gleaned the true nature of business in this world of ours?”
Stone fails to see her meaning, and says so.
“Allow me to brief you, then. It might alter a few of your perceptions. You are aware of the intended purpose of the Second Constitutional Convention, are you not? It was couched in high-flown phrases like ‘unleash the strength of the American system,’ and ‘meet foreign competition head-to-head, ensuring a victory for American business that will pave the way for democracy throughout the world.’ All very noble-sounding. But the actual outcome was quite different. Business has no stake in any political system per se. Business cooperates to the extent that cooperation furthers its own interests. And the primary interest
