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The words chilled hih Abandonment of a child? Loss of the faht He sed, and tried to stifle the reaction, knowing his empathic host would feel it all too well
"Go ahead, Laurent," she said, "be appalled It&039;s okay"
"I don&039;t mean to--"
"I know But don&039;t try to control your thoughts around e&039;s advice on negotiating with the ene, the best correction is sudden directness
"How close did you get, before the city drove you mad?" he asked
"I&039;m not sure, exactly I didn&039;t knoasme to pieces"
She turned away from hirew nearer, the ravity or broadcast radio But the traffic going into the festival slowed us down, so the ramp up in volume wasn&039;t exponential, as it could have been"
"So clinical, Nara"
"Because I don&039;t really remember, not sequentially, anyway I only recall that I loved it Riding a victory celebration of a quarter million minds, Laurent, who&039;d won a continental election for the first time in decades There was so much joy there: success after years of work, redemption for old defeats, the sense that justice would finally be done I think I fell in love with politics that day"
"The day you went
"But by the time we reached the center of town, it was too much for me I was raw and unprotected, a thousand tihts of passing strangers hit me like revelations, the noise of the city obliteratedmind My reflex was to strike out, I suppose, to physically retaliate I was brought into the hospital bloody, and it wasn&039;t all oes
"They left aped There was no point in hiding his reaction
"Why didn&039;t your parents take you back hoed "They didn&039;t know When your child has an unexplained seizure, you don&039;t take them into the hinterland They had me transferred to the best facility possible, which happened to be in the largest city on Vasthold"
"But you said you haven&039;t seen them since"
"It was in Vasthold&039;s expansion phase They had ten children, Laurent And their silent one, their retarded child, had becoerous little beast They couldn&039;t travel across the world to visit me This was a colony world, Laurent"
More protests rose in Zai, but he took a deep breath No point in battering Nara&039;s parents It was a different culture, and a long tio
"How many years were youe six to tenthat&039;s roughly age twelve to nineteen in Absolute years Puberty, young adulthood All with eight million voices in my mind"
"Inhuman," he said
She turned back to the fire, half s "There are only a few of my kind A lot of synesthetic enorance Now they understand that synesthesia implants will cause empathy in a few dozen kids a year Most live in cities, of course, and the condition is discovered within days of the operation When the kids blow, they ship theh for apathy treatments But I was desensitized the old-fashioned way"
"Exposure"
"What was it like in those years, Nara?" No point in hiding his curiosity from an empath
"I was the city, Laurent Its ani id of desire and need, frustration and anger The heart of humanity, and yes, of politics But almost utterly without self Mad"
Zai narrowed his eyes He&039;d never thought of a city that way, as having a mind It was so close to the Rix perversion
"Exactly," she said, apparently having pluht "That&039;s why I&039;m anti-Rix, for a Secularist"
"What do you mean?"
"Cities are beasts, Laurent The body politic is nothing but an animal It needs humans to lead it, personalities to shape the le- beast, then worship it as a god"
"But so, some sort of compound mind is really there, Nara? Even on an Ience suppressed? Even without the networks"
She nodded "I heard it every day Had it in my mind Whether computers er, soht about that"
"Thus the Emperor protects us," Zai whispered
"Yes Our counter-god," Oxhaap"
"But why not, Nara? You said it yourself, we need huive huht the Emperor so bitterly?"
"Because no one elected him," she said "And because he&039;s dead"
Zai shook his head, the disloyal words painful
"But the honored dead chose hio They can call another Quorum to remove him, if they ever wanted to"
"The dead are dead, Laurent They don&039;t live with us anymore You&039;ve seen the distance in their eyes They are nocity may be a beast, but at least it&039;s human: e are"
She leaned toward hiht in her eyes
"Hu that ood and evil in this universe Not gods or dead people Not machines Us"
"The honored dead are our ancestors, Nara," he whispered fiercely, as if silencing a child in church
"They&039;re a ative social and econo more"
"That&039;s insane," he said
He closed his mouth on the words, too late
She stared back at him, triumph and sadness on her face
They sat there for a while longer, the thing that had been between the, but doubted an apology wouldwhat he should do 3
DECOMPRESSION
Swift decisions are virtuous, unless they have irrevocable consequences --ANONYMOUS 167 SENATOR
The constellation of eyes glistened, reflecting the sunlight that penetrated the cultured-dia closed behind Senator Nara Oxha as it did the eyes of a nocturnal predator On Oxha bears, paracoyotes, and feral nightdogs On some deep, instinctive level, Nara Oxhas
The creatures were splayed--fifteen or twenty of theravity They wafted like polychrome clouds down the wide, breezy hallways of the Emperor&039;s inner palace, carried by the ah, as always here in the crowded capital, but sufficient sensitivity rehts They regarded her coolly as they drifted past, secure in their privilege, in their deodhood, and in their speechless wisdouor Of course, their species had never, even in the millennia before Imperial decree had elevated them to semidivine status, doubted its innate superiority
They were imperious consorts, these personal familiars of His Risen Majesty They were felis domesticus immortalis
They were, in a word, cats
And in a few more words, cats ould never die
Senator Nara Oxham hated cats
She halted as the invisible bed passed, anxious not to disturb the air currents that infore The ani her with languid malevolence, and she had to steel herself to return their unblinking gaze So much for her brave, anti-Imperial heresies Nara Oxham&039;s constituency was an entire planet, but here in the Diahty senator found herself inti unease had returned the ressed across the Rubicon Pale, the protective barrier, electronic and legal, that encircled the Forum and ensured the Senate&039;s independence The aircar waiting for her at the Pale&039;s shi of paper and string But inside the car, fragility had transforravity reaching out to spin the city beneath her like a juggler&039;s fingers turning bright pins--ah the n aircar had becoent as it headed toward the Diaht path, as if the world were clay turning on a fast wheel below This profligate expediture of energy to take her ht: awesomely expensive, exquisitely refined