This time color flushed her cheeks without any artificial assistance. Palmer grabbed her hand to steady both of them.
Astaroth looked Palmer in the eye and whispered, “I know that she was only thirty when you became lovers on Earth. Good old Earth… where the age for consent is thirty-five!”
“Prove it,” Palmer challenged through clenched teeth.
The professor shook his head. “I don’t want to cause trouble, my fellow spies. I no more approve of the Schlessinger Laws than you do.”
In common with most aristocrats, Lady Lamarr had a deeply psychotic side. Her voice was dangerous as she reminded both men of the facts. “There is no statute of limitations for sex with an underager.”
As they discussed the volatile issue, the three of them slowly moved to a more private corner of the ballroom. Palmer was relieved to see that Astaroth seemed inclined to keep the conversation private. They wound up standing next to one of the service entrances.
The professor tried manfully to put the genie back into the bottle. “I only bring this up to make a point, my young friends. Here are the two of you sworn to uphold the crazy world state and even you have run afoul of its statistical models and lunatic social engineering.”
For some reason Palmer didn’t feel like making a joke about this being the right place to discuss lunacy. Eyes wide, Bretygne asked, “My God, are you with the anarchists?”
“No. I’m the other kind of libertarian, a minarchist who wants a limited state and a genuine Bill of Rights.”
“You’ve got a point there,” Palmer agreed. “The Children’s Bill of Rights is nothing like the old American one.”
“Full marks for knowing some history,” said Palmer.
“All libertarianism is illegal,” Bretygne stated the obvious, “but I’ve known you were somewhere on the radical side for a long time. You should be the last person to threaten us!”
“No threat, my dear lady. I’ve done things just as illegal as the two of you. We can hold each other hostage. How wonderful that we meet through our sordid occupation of providing information to the state!”
They listened to each other’s silences. The distant clinking of glasses and low hum of voices seemed comforting somehow. The thick cloud of paranoia began to part as the light of mutual advantage touched their faces.
“Is this a safe place to have our conversation?” asked Bretygne.
“None better,” said the professor. “The ambassador has made this a high-tech cocoon of privacy. We need only worry about human ears. Besides, we are higher-ranking spies than anyone sent to keep an eye on us.”
“So what do you want?” asked Palmer.
“Profits for all of us, and maybe something even better. What would you say to freedom?”
The ballroom music began, an arrangement of classic rap-Muzak. This conservative choice of music inspired Palmer to better understand the mind behind the wrinkles.
“Bretygne told me that you think the world went to hell back in the twenty-first century. That’s long before the current system took over.”
“One thing leads to another.” Astaroth smiled, glad of an audience. “You seem to know about the North American Bill of Rights. Have you studied the Welfare War that led to the collapse of the American Empire?”
“Only what I was told in school.”
“The causes of that war continue to fester even in the present day. They were the actual reason the world state eventually outlawed both capitalism and socialism. And so we descended to a new rung of hell, the Maternal Ageist Society.”
“He’s quoting from one of his private books,” Bretygne told Palmer, then added proudly: “I read the whole thing!”
Emboldened, Astaroth continued. “Then you remember that capitalism was outlawed as too individualistic and the cause of social atomism. Socialism was forbidden as too egalitarian and unable to punish certain groups at the expense of others, an important matter when the new chrono-charts determined everyone’s place in society according to maturity levels. Our duties and obligations and guilts are calibrated before we even pop out of the womb!”
“I forgot the length of your essay” admitted the lady Lamarr.
“I need another drink,” said Palmer.
Instead of a servo-mech, a ten-year-old chose that moment to wander over. He had no drinks to offer but provided an excellent prop for the prof.
Placing his hand on the blue sphere surrounding the kid, Astaroth lectured some more: “I curse the day that social scientists and religious leaders were ever allowed to fraternize. That’s carrying free speech too far. In an orgy of bipartisanship, they threw out all their good ideas and joined ranks on the bad ones. There was no need to actually burn the old Bill of Rights if it only applied to adults—and the rules for adulthood were constantly changed. Some of us can’t vote until we’re eighty. Some of us can’t marry until we’re fifty. The drinking age for everyone is forty. Heaven help those who are finally judged mature at all levels, and so condemned to eternal slavery for an ever-growing population of the immature.”
Professor Astaroth finally ran out of steam. They all looked at the smiling face of the ten-year-old boy in his protective bubble. He’d been watching the professor’s mouth move. Astaroth did have a most expressive face. Palmer gave the ball a friendly push and sent the kid on his way, back to his parents or state warders. One was as likely as the other.
“Well,” said Palmer, “life’s an itch. What’s anyone to do?”
“Order more drinks,” said Astaroth, his most successful speech of the evening. “If I can’t have an ideal society, I’ll settle for more vodka.”
Just then a figure appeared at the service entrance, but it was too tall to be a servo-mech. The figure moved fast. Palmer instinctively reached for a gun that he’d left behind, a condition of attending the embassy ball. But the figure didn’t attack. It stopped running and stood next to the threesome, a huge grin on its face—and an even huger cigar sticking at them between very white teeth.
Hardly anyone smoked cigars anymore.
The man wasn’t easy to recognize. He was wearing a strange costume with baggy pants. A black mustache was painted on his upper lip. His eyebrows looked as if two Martian caterpillars (genetically bred to enrich the soil) had crawled on his forehead to die.
Palmer recognized the man first. After all, he’d spent time with him. A blessedly short amount of time. This exasperating excuse for a human being had kept trying to convince Palmer that he was his own identical twin; and then he’d pretended to be the brother! And so on. And on.
“Konski.” Palmer said it like a curse.
“Professor Astrolobe, you old fraud,” said the guest of honor amiably. “Are you still looking for Freedonia?”
“What are you doing in that costume?” asked Bretygne who had seen the ambassador on the uniweb many times. Researching his predilections and outre writings had hardly prepared her for this.
“Never mind that,” said Konski. “Pick a card.”
“You don’t have any cards,” Astaroth observed in a tired voice.
“It’s because of the Nano Collapse. So hard to have physical stuff any longer.”
The lady present was genuinely offended. “You don’t have to use the ’n’ word!”
“We must never forget the hard lessons,” said Konski. “I’m sure old Professor Astringent will agree that there were unexpected benefits to the Nano War. Or collapse. Or crap-out. Or crash. Or dissolution.
Or… I forget the rest. Well, no matter. It was impressive, we’ll all agree. Lots more special effects than any other war. Why, if Earth military forces hadn’t used those molecular decompilers we’d all be so rich now we wouldn’t have anything to do.”
He took off his hat—no one else was wearing a hat—and held it over his heart. “Let’s shed a tear for the end of the nano-trick era. We wanted the treats instead.”
The solemn moment over, he threw the hat over his head and watched a servo-mech glide out of the service entrance he’d used a moment before. Konski crouched and feigned great excitement as to whether the robot’s silver tentacle would snag the ancient headgear before it touched the floor. The robot succeeded and Konski jumped up
