Free Schismatrix plus by Bruce Sterling

companionship, simple trust and regard. Simple irrelevance. Kitsune hauled the yarite out of its biomonitored cradle beneath the floorboards. In some ways the thing had passed the limits of the clinically dead; sometimes they had to slam it into operation like push-starting a balky engine.
    Its maintenance technology was the same type that supported the Mechanist cyborgs of the Radical Old and the Mech cartels. Filters and monitors clogged the thing's bloodstream; the internal glands and organs were under computer control. Implants sat on its heart and liver, prodding them with electrodes and hormones. The old woman's autonomous nervous system had long since collapsed and shut down.
    Kitsune examined a readout and shook her head. "The acid levels are rising as fast as our stocks, darling. The plugs are degrading its brain. It's very old. Held together with wires and patchwork."
    She sat it up on a floor mat and spooned vitaminized pap into its mouth.
    "You should seize control on your own," he said. He inserted a dripping plug into a duct on the yarite's veiny forearm.
    "I'd like that," she said. "But I have a problem getting rid of this one. The sockets on its head will be hard to explain away. I could cover them with skin grafts, but that won't fool an autopsy.... The staff expect this thing to live forever. They've spent enough on it. They'll want to know why it died."
    The yarite moved its tongue convulsively and dribbled out its paste. Kitsune hissed in annoyance. "Slap its face," she said. Lindsay ran a hand through his sleep-matted hair. "Not this early," he said,, half pleading.
    Kitsune said nothing, merely straightened her back and shoulders and set her face in a prim mask. Lindsay was defeated at once. He jerked his hand back and swung it across the thing's face in a vicious open-handed slap. A spot of color showed in its leathery cheek.
    "Show me its eyes," she said. Lindsay grabbed the thing's gaunt cheeks between his thumb and fingers and twisted its head so that it met Kitsune's eyes. With revulsion, he recognized a dim flicker of debased awareness in its face.
    Kitsune took his hand away and lightly kissed his palm. "That's my good darling," she said. She slipped the spoon between the thing's slack lips. THE MARE TRANQULLITATIS PEOPLE'S CIRCUMLUNAR ZAIBATSU: 21-4-'16
    The Fortuna pirates floated like red-and-silver paper cutouts against the interior walls of the Kabuki Bubble. The air was loud with the angry spitting of welders, the whine of rotary sanders, the wheeze of the air filters.
    Lindsay's loose kimono and trousers ruffled in free-fall. He reviewed the script with Ryumin. "You've been rehearsing this?" he said.
    "Sure," said Ryumin. "They love it. It's great. Don't worry." Lindsay scratched his floating, puffy hair. "I don't quite know what to make of this."
    A camouflaged surveillance plane had forced itself into the Bubble just before the structure was sealed shut. Against the bright triangular pastels, its dreary camouflage made it as obvious as a severed thumb. The machine yawed and dipped within the fifty-meter chamber, its lenses and shotgun microphones swiveling relentlessly. Lindsay was glad it was there, but it bothered him.
    "I have the feeling I've heard this story before," he said. He flipped through the printout's pages. The margins were thick with cartoon stick figures scribbled there for the illiterate. "Let me see if I have it right. A group of pirates in the Trojan asteroids have kidnapped a Shaper woman. She's some kind of weapons specialist, am I right?"
    Ryumin nodded. He had taken his new prosperity in stride. He wore ribbed silk coveralls in a tasteful shade of navy and a loose beret, high fashion in the Mech cartels. A silver microphone bead dotted his upper lip. Lindsay said, "The Shapers are terrified by what the pirates might do with her expertise. So they form an alliance and put the pirates under seige. Finally they trick their way in and burn the place out." Lindsay looked