Aristoi by Walter Jon Williams

Author:Walter Jon Williams [Williams, Walter Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, Sears, General, C429, Extratorrents, Kat
ISBN: 9780812514094
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 1992-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

SCHÖN: What is the meaning of this?

LULU: The meaning? The knife and your death!

By morning Gabriel was in love. The remorseless Welcome Rain had stalked Remmy through the reception like Vronski pursuing Anna through the train— wedging through chinks in armor, provoking, proposing, turning away softly every repudiation, consistently inferring, through the haze of Remmy’s denial, Remmy’s own nature . . . Gabriel had left the reception in Remmy’s coach, driven to his cabinet in Santa Leofra’s quarter, the Welcome Rain savoring his triumph in Gabriel’s skull.

All because Gabriel knew how the psyche worked, how it was mirrored by the body. How to trump every stance, every pose, every physical mode; how to pursue an inevitable course through another’s mind.

These people, with their fragmented psyches, could not resist a whole human being who wished to direct his entire force against them.

An Aristos could do anything here. Gabriel wondered if Saigo had discovered this, and had found it to his liking— a small cosmos where he would find nothing but victims.

Lucky for everyone, Gabriel thought, that he, Gabriel, had no real vices.

Remmy slept. Gabriel finished his usual two hours’ rest, then drew on his cassock and went prowling through the apartment.

The place was small, only three rooms stacked vertically around the building’s corner staircase, bedroom on top, parlor in the middle, entry way and servant’s room on the bottom. It was elegantly decorated in green and apricot, with glossy hardwood floors. There were icons, crosses, and a small shrine— Remmy had amused Gabriel by kneeling and saying prayers before sleep. Hand-colored prints shared the walls with musical instruments. A kind of cembalo stood on four stout legs in the second-floor parlor.

Gabriel peered out the window into predawn, saw only workmen heading for their jobs, the usual poor sleeping in the usual doorways, and one fashionably-dressed man, cloaked, hooded, and very well armed, leaving a rendezvous. The buildings were a curious mixture of stately, imposing buildings and crowded tenements.

Santa Leofra’s quarter. This seemed to be where the various classes of the city came together.

Still, even if they were here they weren’t doing anything interesting. Boredom settled onto Gabriel again. He considered trying to contact the Cressida and deal with correspondence and matters from his domaine, but he decided he was too far from the long-range relay transmitter in his luggage. Not that he couldn’t reach it, but the transmission would have to cross too many city blocks: Saigo or his minions might detect it.

Gabriel looked at the instruments again. They didn’t seem of high quality, but then this wasn’t Remmy’s official home, either.

He took a five-stringed guitarlike instrument from the wall, strummed it, found it needed tuning. There was fine mother-of-pearl inlay on the face, but otherwise it was rather battered. Gabriel sat on a sofa, tuned and played. There were no frets on the neck, but Gabriel experimented, built reflexes into and through his reno, and soon managed (Cyrus transcribing for the new instrument just ahead of Gabriel’s fingers) a competent Bach sonata.

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