Carnival

They have only goals and directives, and while they wait for the opportunity to carry out those directives and continue to achieve those goals, they play endless, complicated games.

They find Kii unremarkable. They are incurious.

They are intelligent, Kii decides, notesthelich . They have no art. Which perhaps means the bipeds are notesthelich either, if they are associated with these consciousnesses, which they call the Governors.

If they are notesthelich, not people…

That would simplify things.

7

THE DOCKS WERE TARRED WOOD, AN ARCHAIC EXTRAVAGANCE. Vincent kept wanting to crouch and run his fingers across the surface to verify the size of the logs. They were laid side by side, countertapered, each one meters in diameter at the base. The whole thing shivered faintly when the sea foamed around the pilings. The cargo pod—detached from the lighter, now—bobbed at the end of the pier, squeaking against the bumpers. Vincent was grateful for the hats that Miss Pretoria had had in her hand when she arrived that morning. If he’d been planning on going back to the OECC, he’d have made a note to get them to design licenses for headgear for future diplomats.

Michelangelo stood impassive on his left hand, two steps away and half a step behind. Miss Pretoria was on his right side, her security detail flanking the three of them. They’d taken a surface car here from the government center, a fuel-cell vehicle. They must use the native power to compress hydrogen for charging it, instead of the processes that had led to such vehicles being banned on Old Earth. There was no tang of combustion products anywhere near the city, and his wardrobe reported clean air. Particulates were limited to dust and organics—skin flakes, pollen, microscopic organisms, the inevitable detritus of man and nature.

Vincent leaned closer to Miss Pretoria and asked, “What will you do when your population increases beyond the capacity of the remnant cities?”

“We haven’t even identified their limits yet. Our problem has been keeping our population on an up-curve.”

“And yet, no eugenics laws.”

“Women who work historically have fewer children than those who don’t,” she said. “And we work veryhard. Many women get their Obligation out of the way as early as is legal, or don’t even bother with it if they don’t wantto head a household. Three babies isn’t a big investment for a man, but—biologically speaking—it’s an enormous one for a woman. At least until the children are crиched. Also, there’s the Trials. Only our best males breed, and they’re in demand.”

“Stud males,” Vincent said quietly.

Michelangelo glanced at him, and then at Miss Pretoria. “‘Gentle’ males don’t reproduce?”

“There are women who make arrangements. But we won’t stoop to intervention to conceive. And you won’t find a market for implants like yours here.” Her shrug bordered on a shudder.

“Moral objections to implanted tech?”

“After the first Assessment? I don’t know how you can walk around in a utility fog that could start disassembling your body anytime your Governors decide they’re done with you.”

Vincent raised an eyebrow. Michelangelo opened his mouth and shut it again. They walked quietly, the sea breeze ruffling the fine hairs on Vincent’s skin, the pier echoing with the cries of some white-winged flying animal. Parallel evolution; it looked enough like an Old Earth tern that Michelangelo did a double-take over the first one, but the rear limbs were feathered as well, and seemed to act as auxiliary wings. Vincent pointedly continued to say nothing when he saw them scavenging among buckets of offal lined up stinking at the quayside.

The reek was astounding. Vincent breathed through his mouth until they were out where the breeze off the bay blew away the worst, and Michelangelo gritted his teeth, swallowed hard, and touched his watch to adjust his blood chemistry. He’s doing that too much. But this wasn’t the time to say it.

The murmur of conversation swelled and dropped as they passed each cluster of bystanders—men and women, finally, although far more of the latter. Vincent stole sideways glances right back. Thesemen were tough looking, muscular, most of them strikingly scarred. They were dressed distinctively, trousers and vests, each of them wearing a leather bracelet on his left wrist with a brightly colored badge. “Household allegiance?” Vincent asked, nodding to the badges.

“License,” Miss Pretoria said.