For lovers they certainly were. There was no mistaking either the meaning of the image or the forbidden nature of the passion that suffused it.
And there was no doubt in Arkady’s mind about what would surely happen, what had to happen, in the next moment of that frozen eternity.
“Well,” Korchow pressed. “What do you think?”
“I think—” Arkady cleared his throat. “I think the man who painted this was a great artist.”
“One of the greatest,” Korchow agreed. “He was said to be the lover of the Shah for whom he painted it.”
“And was the Shah pleased by the painting?”
“It isn’t known. He died before it was finished.”
Arkady turned away, unable to look at the thing any longer.
“You still haven’t said if you like it or not,” Korchow pointed out. “I ask because I’m thinking of making a gift.”
It took a moment for Arkady to parse the unfamiliar phrase. The word giftexisted in Syndicate Standard, but it applied, in the absence of personal or biological property, to a completely different concept.
“Unfortunately,” Korchow continued, “I’m not familiar with the taste of the young man in question. I thought you might advise me. After all, you know him so much better than I do.”
They looked at each other, the long-dead Shah and his doomed lover lying forgotten between them.
When Arkady was six he had witnessed the Peacekeeper attack on ZhangSyndicate. It had been over in seconds, and it had happened miles away across empty space, but it still dogged his nightmares. The great orbital station’s outer hull had held, staving off hard vac; but the fireball had ripped through the habitat modules and gutted them with all the crèchelings on board and unrescued. That attack had killed ZhangSyndicate. Its arks had been contaminated, their precious gene-sets rendered unusable. And where there were children there could be no Syndicate. Most of the surviving Zhangs had chosen suicide over the sterile prospect of life as walking ghosts. Sometimes it was hard to remember they’d ever existed. But Arkady remembered the terrible beauty of the burning. The white-hot fire lighting up one viewport after another as the inner bulwarks gave way. The condensation steaming off the hull and refreezing in the void. His body felt like that now: a dead shell dissolving into a glittering ice storm of hope, pain, terror.
“It’s understandable that you would still have feelings for him,” Korchow said in the bland, reasonable, sympathetic voice that still haunted Arkady’s nightmares. “Why be ashamed to admit to them? What you did, you did because you loved him. No one holds thatagainst you. After all, what else did they intend to happen when they assigned you to each other?”
Arkady froze. Had Arkasha said something? Was Korchow still playing them off against each other? Would Arkady hurt his pairmate by acknowledging Korchow’s insinuations?
“Tell me,” Korchow asked before Arkady could decide how to answer. “Do you begin to understand what we’re doing here?”
Arkady shook his head. “Here…where?”
“Here on Earth.” Korchow pointed to the carpeted floor, the walls of the room, the city beyond the walls. “Think, Arkady. Use that handsome head of yours for something other than ants.”
But Arkady had thought. He’d lain awake thinking month after month, night after cold night. And he still knew nothing he hadn’t known back on Novalis. So he waited, schooling his face into impassive stillness, not wanting to say or do anything that might jeopardize the sudden and unexpected flow of information.
“What do you know about the colonization of the Americas?” Korchow asked, in an apparent change of subject.
Arkady stuttered something about sociogenesis and intersocietal competition and the perverse incentives of social systems based on sexual reproduction—
“Yes, yes. Forget all the tripe from your tenth-year sociobiology class. We teach you that because it’s good for you, not because it’s true. In any case, when the Europeans first arrived in the Americas—they actually called it the New World, if you can imagine such parochialism—they encountered a civilization as well established in many respects as their own. Mexico City had more residents than the largest cities of Europe, and they were a hell of a lot cleaner and better fed judging from the Conquistadors’ letters home. And even the Aztecs were practically savages compared to the Incas.
“Unfortunately for the Incas, the collision of the Old and the New World turned out not to be a clash of cultures, but a clash of diseases. A plague of plagues swept through the Americas in the wake of the first explorers. Black Death. Syphilis. Influenza. Smallpox. The first explorers discovered a continent of vibrant cities—and by the time the first colonists landed all that was left were graves and charnel houses. It was a classic case of an isolated population encountering a much larger one…and any competent evolutionary ecologist can tell you where that leads.
“At some point during this scourge, the Spanish developed a new and devilishly clever strategy of conquest: gifts. They gave the Incas blankets that had been used by smallpox victims. The blankets were warm and beautiful. They were passed from hand to hand, treasures from another world. And they ended up killing more people than European gunpowder ever did.”
Korchow looked at him expectantly—but whatever lesson he meant Arkady to draw from the tale, Arkady couldn’t make the connection.
“Never mind,” he said after a moment. “You’re a good boy, Arkady. And it’s not lack of intelligence that keeps you from understanding. It’s the same thing that kept you from seeing what was happening on Novalis: idealism. Rostov did a beautiful job when they detanked you. A really fine piece of work. No sense in trying to play country fiddle on a Stradivarius. Do you have any questions about the auction? If you want to ask me anything, now is your moment. It may be difficult to talk this privately again.”
Arkady hesitated, thinking. “There was someone missing,” he said at last. “Someone you told me to look for. Why wasn’t Walid Safik there?”
“I don’t know. The Palestine Security Services are…opaque. It can be very hard to tell what’s going on beneath the surface. People fall in and out of favor unpredictably. But don’t count Safik out. If he’s not invited to the party he’ll find a way to crash it sooner or later.”
“And what about the other party crasher? Turner?”
Korchow’s hand crept to his throat in the same nervous gesture the construct Catherine Li had provoked back at the auction meet. “I didn’t expect the Americans to take an interest. I don’t like it. Still…we may still be able to make use of him.”
“Will he be allowed to interrogate me?” Arkady asked, thinking of the cold eyes behind Turner’s easygoing smile.
“I assume so. But I’ll ask to have it done under GolaniTech supervision. The Americans have a bad habit of changing the rules when they don’t like them.”
“What should I tell him?”
“Whatever he asks you to tell him. I believe in sacrifice, Arkady, but not in pointless sacrifice.”
Korchow fingered the miniature that lay forgotten on the table between them. Arkady glanced at it and shivered.
“You never told the bidders about Bella,” Korchow said.
“You mean about her…” He couldn’t bring himself to say the word, so he settled for a more neutral term, “…illness? But you told me not to tell them.”
“Did I? Well, I suppose I might have at that.” Korchow was smiling at him. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. But when Turner has his little talk with you, why don’t you drop that in his ear and see what happens?”
Arkady blinked at Korchow, comprehension beginning to dawn on him. “This is all about Bella and Ahmed. You wantthe humans to know about them. Then why all the subterfuge? Why not just tell them?”