Carnival

“It was the last time–”

When they were still half convinced they could keep their relationship a secret. When they thought they had,and the sex had, all too often, been furtive and hasty, and–

“Yes.” The words scratching his throat. “I remember.”

“Do you remember what you said to me?”

He knows,Kusanagi‑Jones thought. He stroked Vincent’s hip lightly, feeling heat and skin slick with moisturizer and analgesic. “Told you,” he said, picking over each word, “no matter what happened, I wanted you to know I–” He shrugged. It wasn’t something he had the courage to say twice in one lifetime. “I did. Want you to know.”

“And something happened.”

“Yeah.” Kusanagi‑Jones closed his eyes, filtering out the charcoal‑sketch outline of Vincent’s face. “Had to eventually.”

“I didn’t answer at the time,” Vincent said. “I–”

Michelangelo reacted fast. Just fast enough to get his hands into Vincent’s braids–careful of his burned neck–and pull Vincent’s mouth down to his own before Vincent could say anything stupid. Before Vincent could give him back his own words of nearly two decades before.

Vincent’s voice trailed off in a mumble that buzzed against Michelangelo’s lips for a moment before Vincent’s mouth opened, wet, yielding, returning fierceness for fierceness and strength for strength. The confession, however it might have begun, turned into a pleased, liquid moan. Teeth clicked and tongues slid, and Michelangelo arched his spine to press their groins together, not daring to hook his ankles over the backs of Vincent’s calves. Vincent pulled back, panting, drawing the scratchy cords of his braids through Michelangelo’s fingers.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” he ordained. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Vincent asked, archly, lowering his head to claim another kiss.

“Nothing interesting.”

Gray on gray in Michelangelo’s augmented sight, Vincent’s eyebrows rose. Nothing,Michelangelo thought, because I’m going to sabotage this mission, too. Because I’m going to give you up again. I have it in my hands, sod it, and I don’t…care…enough to sacrifice a whole culture for you.

So I’m going to help New Amazonia get away, the same way I helped New Earth get away, and they’re going to take me away from you again.

What he said was, “Vincent. Your turn tonight.”

Kii understands. The bipeds do this themselves. They choose. As the Consent chooses, in its own time. The way of life is growth and consumption, blind fulfillment.

This is not the way of the Consent. As the Consent chooses to enter a virtual space and achieve a burdenless immortality, the bipeds, unpredatored, invent a predator. Something that keeps them in balance. Something that kills their culls, forces them to evolve when they outstrip their native predators.

A stroke of genius. An entire society bent to poetry.

They areesthelich, after all.

Vincent waited while Angelo pushed the pillows aside and stretched on his stomach, breathing shallowly until Vincent covered Michelangelo with his body again, licking the warm curve of Angelo’s ear as Angelo turned his head to breathe. Vincent caught Angelo’s hands in his own and pressed them to the bed. Playing at restraint.

Angelo squirmed, panting, muscle rippling as he pushed against Vincent, so powerful and so contained, and so soft where it counted. He had always loved this, loved and feared it, rarely permitted it, almost never asked. He hated letting anybody, even Vincent–perhaps especially Vincent–far enough inside his armor to see the vulnerabilities underneath. To see him need anything.

And he would never forgive Vincent if he understood how transparent he was, in this one particular, and how well Vincent understood this aspect of his psyche. Because Michelangelo was a Liar–and while Vincent couldn’t tell when Angelo was lying, he knew how it worked. Their talents were the same at the root. But Angelo’s was broken.

Vincent had been born with a cognitive giftedness. He was a superperceiver. Michelangelo had the same gift. And if he had grown up in the environment Vincent had, chances were he would have been as skilled at understanding and compromise and gentle manipulation. But he’d been raised under harsher circumstances, and Michelangelo’s gift had been shaped by a history of verbal abuse and neglect into something else. Where a less talented child would have been driven into a borderline personality, Michelangelo had been warped into a perfect machine for survival. A chameleon, a shape shifter.

A glossy exterior that showed only the reflection of the person looking in.

Except for now, when Michelangelo lifted himself, asking, and Vincent came to him. Exertion stung the tender skin on Vincent’s back and buttocks and sweat dripped into his eyes, scattering over Michelangelo’s shoulders as Angelo stretched under him. Vincent’s wardrobe was overloading again; he didn’t care. Headfucks and Venus flytraps and feedback loops were all right, but they didn’t satisfy the i

He rocked against Angelo, hands and mouth busy on whatever he could reach. Michelangelo answered him with sounds that might have indicated pain, if they hadn’t come in tandem with the eager motions of his hips and the clench of his hands in the bedclothes. Michelangelo flexed to meet his final, savage demands, and then they slumped together and pooled, relaxing.

Everything’s better with a friend,Vincent thought, snorting with laughter.

“Glad to know I amuse you,” replied the dryly muffled voice, Michelangelo slipping into their code.

Vincent resettled against his back, racing heartbeats synchronizing. “What did that Ouagadougou woman want with you?”

“You caught that?” Angelo sounded sleepy. “One of ours.”

“Coalition?”

“Mmm. Our contact. Slipped me a map this afternoon. Might do some exploring in a bit.”

“Alone?”

“Easier to countermeasure one than two, and I spent more time in the gallery than you did.”

“What’s the gallery got to do with anything?”

“Seems to be how you get there, if I’m reading this thing right–” Shoulders already whisked dry by utility fogs rose and fell against Vincent’s chest. “What’d you find out?”

Vincent thought of the unexamined chip concealed under the table edge, and dropped his chin on Angelo’s shoulder. “House–The city, I mean. Lesa called it House.”

“Yeah?”

“I think it’s an AI. Not sure if it’s sentient–I mean, self‑aware–or not, but it’s sure as hell sapient. It problem‑solves. And works from limited data to provide a best‑response.”

“Tells us how the marines died.”

“Sure. The city just…lured them where the Elders wanted them brought. And then walled them up. For as long as it took.”

That brought a long silence, and then a sigh. “Hope the countermeasures work.”

Vincent grunted. Michelangelo stretched again, the restless motion of hips and shoulders that meant get off me, oaf.

Vincent rolled clear. “How will you bypass security?”

“Don’t be silly,” said Angelo. “Going to turn invisible.”

Lesa made sure Agnes knew she wouldn’t be expecting Robert that night. She sat before her mirror, combing the brighteners into her hair, and contemplated the blankness with which Vincent had met her code phrase. A code phrase encoded on the chip he’dprovided, at the meet prearranged by Katherine Lexasdaughter.

Which Robert had taken directly from his hand, palmed, and pressed immediately into hers. Vincent didn’t know who he was to meet on New Amazonia. Couldn’t know, before he made planetfall. It was too dangerous for everyone concerned.