Carnival

She wondered if Kusanagi-Jones was aware of Katherinessen’s duplicity, and if he was, if Katherinessen knewhe was aware, or if there was a different stress on the relationship. They’d been apart for a long time, hadn’t they? Since New Earth. Things changed in seventeen years.

Then as fast as it had been revealed the flash of anger was gone, and Lesa was left wondering again. Because it was possible she’d been intended to see it, that it was more misdirection. They were good enough to keep her guessing, especially when Katherinessen smiled fondly across the table at Kusanagi-Jones, not at all like a man acknowledging a hit.

Lesa was aware of the other dynamics playing out around the table. They were transparent to her, the background of motivations and relationships that she read and manipulated as part of her work, every day. But none of them were as interesting as Katherinessen and Kusanagi-Jones. Their opacities, their complexities. She could make a study just of the two of them.

And something still kept picking at the edge of her consciousness, like Katherinessen picking at Maiju, like a bird picking for a grub, though she didn’t quite know what to call it. She wondered if they could have fooled her, if perhaps they weren’t gentle after all. The idea gave her a cold moment, as much for fear of her own capabilities eroding as for the idea of a couple of stud males running around loose.

Even the best of them—even Robert, whom she loved—were predators. Biologically programmed, as a reproductive strategy. Uncounted years of human history were the proof. In previous societies—in allrecorded societies, other than the New Amazonian—when a woman died by violence, the perpetrator was almost always male. And almost always a member of the woman’s immediate family, often with the complicity of society. The Coalition was a typical example of what men did to women when given half an excuse: petty restrictions, self-congratulatory patronization, and a slew of justifications that amounted to men asserting their property rights.

Two stud males—if they were,and she honestly didn’t think so—on the loose and unlicensed in Penthesilea were unlikely to bring down society. But by the same token, Lesa wouldn’t let a tame fexa run loose in the city. There was always the chance somebody would get bitten.

The irony of that concern, compared to the gender treason she was plotting, made her smile bitterly.

“Miss Pretoria,” Katherinessen said, as the waiter removed his plate, “you’re staring at me.” He hadn’t looked up.

“Are there circumstances under which the well-being of a minority doesmatter? Circumstances of gross injustice?”

“Oppression? Such as the status of men on New Amazonia?”

Elder Kyoto, the minister of security, waved her fork. “There are sound behavioral—”

“Just so,” Claude said. The other guests went quiet. “Or what the Coalition would like to do to New Amazonia, to bring it under hegemony. Setting all that aside for the moment—as civilized people should be able to do”—and it seemed to Lesa that Claude reserved a particularly bland smile for Kusanagi-Jones—“is it still an interesting question on its own merits?”

Katherinessen steepled long fingers. Dessert was being served. He declined a pastry just as Lesa warned them that there was most likely butter in the crust, but both males accepted coffee without cream.

Katherinessen tasted the coffee as soon as it was set before him, buying a few more moments to consider his answer and unconcerned with his transparency. “Whichever group is in ascension at a given moment is, historically speaking, both unlikely to acknowledge even the existenceof abuses or bias, and also to justify the bias on any grounds they can—social, biological, what have you. May we agree on that?”

Claude’s smile slid from bland toward predatory. “Mostly.”

“Then let me raise a counterquestion. Do you believe an egalitarian society is possible?”

“Define egalitarian.”

“Advancement based solely on merit.” Katherinessen smiled at his partner, who was stolidly stirring his coffee over and over again. “As Angelo is fond of pointing out to me, I have certain advantages of birth. My family is well regarded in society on Ur. By comparison, on Old Earth before Assessment, any of us would have been disadvantaged due to our skin tone—if we lived in the industrialized world.”

“Protected by it, later,” Kusanagi-Jones said under his breath. He was leaning on the arm of his chair, toward Lesa; she thought she was the only one who heard it.

Claude didn’t answer immediately. She nodded around the excuse of a bite of pastry, forked up in haste, as if inspecting Katherinessen’s words for the trap. “So even Assessment wasn’t an equalizer. Not a fresh start.”