Carnival

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 di

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 di