Carnival

“But you worked for…‘us.’”

“In appearance.” He reached for another strip of cloth.

It was damp, but so was everything. She shivered when he laid it over seeping flesh. “How long have you been a double?”

The slow smile he turned on her when he looked up from the work of bandaging her legs might, she thought, be the first honest expression she’d ever seen cross his face. He let it linger on her for a moment, then glanced down again.

“I can tell you one way your society does make sense,” Lesa said. “The reason Old Earth women don’t work.”

“And New Amazonian men? But some do. Not everyone can afford the luxury of staying home.”

“Luxury? Don’t you think it’s a trap for some people?”

“Like Julian?” Harshly, though his hands stayed considerate.

She winced. “Yes.”

The silence stretched while he tore cloth. She leaned against rough bark. At least her back was mostly unbitten. “During the Diaspora,” Lesa said, “there wasn’t workon Old Earth. Industry failed, demand fell, money was worth nothing. The only focus was on getting off‑planet. Then, after the Vigil, after the Second Assessment, when the population stabilized, there was an artificial surplus of stuff left over from before. The Old Earth economy relies on maintaining that labor shortage. So women’s value to society is not as professionals, but as homemakers or low‑paid labor. And then you fetishize motherhood, and tell them that they aren’t all good enough for that…”

She trailed off, looking down to see what he was doing to her legs. More salve, more bandages. Meticulous care, up to her knees now. That was the worst of it.

“The Governors’ engineers were mostly female,” Michelangelo said, as if to fill up her silence. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“And Vincent didn’t know about your sympathies?”

“To Free Earth? He didn’t. Not the sort of thing you share. If I wind these, it’ll make it hard to walk.”

“Just salve,” she decided, regretfully. The pressure of the wraps made the bites feel better. “He knows now, though.”

“We both know. Delicious, isn’t it?”

She’d never understand how he said that without the slightest trace of bitterness. “So you grew up gentle on Old Earth, and you became a revolutionary.”

“Never said they were linked.”

“I can speculate.” She touched his shoulder. His nonfunctional wardrobe couldn’t spark her hand away.

He tucked the last tail of the bandages in, and handed her the lotion so she could dab it on the scattered bites higher on her legs, her thighs and belly and hands. He sat back, and shrugged. “It’s not common. Maybe 4 percent, baseline, and they do genetic surgery. Mostly not an issue to manage homosexual tendencies before birth. In boys. Girls are trickier.”

His tone made her flinch.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No,” she said. “Just…genetic surgery. You’re so casual.”

“As casual as you are about eating animals?”

It wasn’t a comment she could answer. “And your mom didn’t opt for the surgery?”

“My mother,” he said, sitting back on his heels as the imperturbable wall slid closed again, “pla

“And you weren’t.”

“No,” he said, quietly. “She was.”

This time, when he touched her ankle, she shivered. But not because of him. She covered his hand with her own, leaning forward to do it, breaking open the crusted cuts on her palm and not caring. “I’m glad you weren’t,” she said. And then she leaned back against the smooth gray aerial root of the big rubbermaid tree that formed the beam and one wall of the lean‑to, and slowly, definitely, closed her eyes.

23

VINCENT COULD SEE NOTHING FROM THE AIR, BUT THAT failed to surprise him. He perched on the observer’s seat of the aircar, beside the pilot, and made sure his wardrobe was active and primed. The Penthesileans wouldn’t give him a weapon, but as long as he had his wits, he wasn’t helpless.

A weaponized utility fog didn’t hurt either.

“They must have a camouflage screen up,” he said over his shoulder.

Elena, in the backseat, grunted as the aircar circled. “Or Katya lied to us.”

“Also possible,” Vincent admitted, as the pilot reported finding nothing on infrared. “I don’t suppose any of these vehicles have pulse capability.”

“This one does,” the pilot answered, after a glance to Elena for permission.

There were seven aircars in the caravan, armored vehicles provided by Elder Kyoto through the Security Directorate. According to Katya, that should be more than enough to handle the complement of this particular Right Hand outpost.

And again, Katya might be wrong. Or she might be decoying them into a trap, though Vincent’s own skills and instincts told him shebelieved she was telling the truth.

Of course, he’d also trusted his own skills and instincts about Michelangelo. But Angelo was the best Liar in the business–and close enough in Vincent’s affections that any reading would be suspect anyway.

“Take us higher, please,” Vincent said. The pilot gave him a dubious look, but when Elena didn’t intervene she shrugged and brought them up. Somewhere down there, indistinguishable from the rest of the canopy by Gorgon‑light, had to be the camouflage field. Invisible–but not unlocatable.

Vincent’s wardrobe included licenses for dozens of useful implements, among them an echolocator. It was designed for use in situations where there was no available light and generating more would be unwise. In this case, he was obligated to patch through the aircar’s ventilation systems to externalize the tympanic membranes, but that was the work of a few moments.

The readout projected to his implants was many‑edged, shifting, translucent, but perfectly detailed, each individual leaf and branch discernable over the spongy reflection of the litter‑covered ground. And just off to the south was a gap in the fragile, shadowy echoes of the canopy, a mysterious, rough‑edged hole floored with sharp regular echoes and softer elevated patches.

“There,” Vincent said, and pointed. “South by southeast, 40 degrees descent.”

“It’s all trees,” the pilot said, and Vincent frowned at her–the frown he reserved for people who obviously couldn’t have meant to disappoint him, and so must have done it through some oversight. “It’s a utility fog,” he said. “A limited‑license one. It pattern‑matches the surrounding territory. Look, see that tree?”

There was one, in particular, a bit taller than the rest and a bit paler in color, as if it hadn’t entirely leafed out yet or were growing in iron‑poor soil.

The pilot nodded. Elena leaned over the chair back to see better, laying a possessive hand on Vincent’s shoulder.

“There’s another one,” she said, and pointed left. The angle was different, and so the silhouettes didn’t quite match, but there they were, as alike as if cloned. “Which is real?”

Vincent indicated the second one with a jerk of his thumb, making an effort not to shrug her hand away, no matter how it irritated. Andreminded him of the tenderness of peeling skin.

At least the damned sunburn hurt less than it had and his wardrobe was doing an adequate job of coping with the sloughing epidermis. Which was unpleasant. But, by comparison, didn’t hurt enough to be worthy of the term.

“Is it safe to descend through the canopy?”

He hesitated. “Theoretically.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning it’s a utility fog, and they can be weaponized. Elder Pretoria–”

Her hand flexed on his shoulder. He hid a flinch. “Yes, Vincent?”

Not Miss Katherinessenanymore. “Does anybody on New Amazonia use fog technology? Because something Lesa said led me to believe it wasn’t warmly considered–”