Carnival

Leaving Kusangi-Jones the choice of siding with Vincent, and leaving most of his species under the threat of Assessment and the Cabinet’s less-than-generous governance—or of lying to Vincent, and protecting New Amazonia from the Coalition and the Coalition from the Dragons, and losing Vincent for good.

He could always tellVincent. But the questions would inevitably lead to New Earth, and the death of the Skidbladnir.

Not that it mattered. The choice wasn’t a choice. It was just torture, and part of the pain was knowing how it would end.

“I need an Advocate,” Kusanagi-Jones muttered, as Saide Austin paused at the bottom of the steps to shake three more hands and then, adjusting her heavy rings, her robes swaying around her sandal-corded ankles, ascended majestically.

“After lunch,” Vincent answered, with a curious glance.

Kusanagi-Jones nodded. The stage had the same curious resilience as the pavement; it felt almost buoyant under his boots as he retraced his steps and reached out to assist Elder Austin up the last stair.

Her hands matched her girth and her shoulders, wide fingered and strong. Her rings pinched him as he hauled her up, and when he pulled back his hand there was a line of blood in the crease of his finger.

She stepped closer, concerned, when he raised the hand to examine. “Did I hurt you?”

“Nothing serious,” he said. His docs were already sealing the wound and a reflexive check for contaminants showed nothing; his watch lights blinked green and serene under the skin. One thing about intelligence work in the diplomatic corps: they paid for the best. “It won’t bother me long.” And as she smiled, chagrined, and turned aside to take Vincent’s hand, he reached out to greet Elder Kyoto.

This time he waited until she reached the top of the stair.

Like the hoary joke about the flat-Earther arguing with the geologist, it was speeches, speeches, speeches all the way down. Vincent had spent three months on Kaiwo Maru,which Michelangelo slept away in cryo, studying the sparse information they had on New Amazonia—fragments sourced from long-term agents on the ground, like Michelangelo’s contact, Miss Ougadougou—and reinforcing chipped and hypnagogic language lessons with live study, for which there was no effective replacement. New Amazonia’s patois was as unique as Ur’s. And Vincent didn’t have the easy, playful facility with languages that Angelo went to such lengths to conceal.

But it had given him an opportunity to work on his own speech. On a Coalition world, he’d have been confident that most people would hear nothing but a few carefully selected sound bites, if the adaptive algorithms in their watches let that much get through the filters. An infotainment system that could determine when the user was bored or not paying attention—and later, efficiently filter out similarly boring content—was handy. But sometimes limiting.

New Amazonia was different. As on Ur, politics was the subject of a good deal of social and personal focus, and the repatriation ceremony would hold the planet’s eyes.

Vincent waited and listened while Claude Singapore welcomed him and Michelangelo and their precious cargo to Penthesilea. Her own speech had been surprisingly short and to the point, and when she turned to introduce him, he paused a moment to admire her grasp of rhetoric before rising and stepping out of the shade of the canopy.

He barely resisted the urge to adjust his chemistry as he stepped up to the lectern, Michelangelo at his side as faithful and silent as any politician’s wife. Sunlight pushed his shoulders down. Like the rest of the speakers, he wasn’t wearing a hat, and the heat seeping through his wardrobe scorched and prickled burned shoulders. He touched the pad on the lectern and said “active” to key the public address system to his voice. He lifted his eyebrows at Michelangelo; all he needed to do. Angelo knew. Vincent’s focus would be on reading and working the crowd from here on in, shaping their energy and giving it back to them, flavored with what he wanted them to think. Judgment, safety, discretion—those had just become Michelangelo’s job.

Vincent took a breath, squared his shoulders, and drew the crowd’s energy around him like a veil.

Audiences were like perfume. Every one a little bit different, but with practice, you could identify the notes. He read this group as expectant, curious, unfriendly. Neither Vincent Katherinessen nor the Coalition was welcome here.

Giving Vincent a mere cable bridge to balance. Because he didn’t care to rehabilitate the Coalition in their eyes. But Vincentneeded to retain their respect.

And he wasn’t about to address the citizens.

“People of New Amazonia,” he began, raising his voice and pitching it so the audio motes would recognize it and amplify it across the crowd. “I stand before you today in hope—”

It was as far as he got. Michelangelo shouted “Shooter!”and Vincent, as he was conditioned to do, went limp.