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“Where did they send you?”
“Joan of Arc’s execution. I watched her burning, and it was beautiful, the way she smiled, the way she looked toward heaven.” Nikki presses close against him as they walk. Her voice still comes to him out of some realm of dream; that bonfire has left her stoned. “The most inspiring trip I ever had. The most deeply spiritual. Where can we go now, Shadrach? Where can we be alone?”
8
He is weary of Karakorum after his encounter with Buckmaster, and he sees now how this whole long day has drained his vigor and glazed his soul; if he could he would stagger to the tube-train and let himself be whisked off to Ulan Bator and his hammock and a night of — at last — deep, satisfying sleep. But Crowfoot, eerily exultant, glows now with insistent lusts, and he does not feel strong enough to confront her disappointment if he denies her now. Arm in arm, therefore, they go to the lovers’ hospice at the north end of the pleasure grounds, a bright-ski
Not much of a room. Bed, washstand, clothes rack, within a little slope-ceilinged segment of the vast dome, a
A florid, goggle-eyed man standing a few meters farther down the platform says in a loud harsh whisper to the woman who accompanies him, “Certainly. In only ninety to one hundred years.”
“Quiet, Bel á!” his companion cries, sounding genuinely alarmed.
“But it is the truth. He lies when he says the stockpiles are increasing daily. I have seen the figures. I tell you, I have seen reliable figures.”
Mordecai finds this interesting. The florid man is Belá Horthy, a dour but volatile Hungarian physicist, creator of the great fusion plant at Bayan Hongor that supplies power for most of northeastern Asia. He also happens to be minister of technology for the Permanent Revolutionary Committee, and it is a little odd to hear so formidably well-co
“The Antidote stockpiles are stable at best, or even decreasing slightly,” Horthy continues, framing his words with the exaggerated precision of the extremely intoxicated. “What Mangu tells us is a lie intended to pacify the populace. He thinks that telling them such things will make them happy and induce them to love him. Pfaugh!” The woman tries desperately to quiet him. She is short and compact, efficiently constructed with her center of gravity close to the ground; her face is partly obscured by an ornate, flamboyant green domino, but Shadrach, after a moment, recognizes her as Do