Wolf Time (Voice of the Whirlwind) by Walter Jon Williams Page B

shook his head. His lashes were full and black. “I think not. Prince Station is a hundred years old— it’s in orbit around Luna, with ready access to minerals, but it cannot compete effectively with the new equipment on other stations. Ram wants to hang on as long as possible— his policy is to loot the economy rather than rebuild. He’s guaranteed the loyalty of the stockholders by paying large dividends, but the economy can’t support the dividends anymore, and the riots showed he has lost control over the situation. It is a matter of time only. We do not expect the change will be violent— not a military sort of violence, anyway.”
    “Too bad. I could use a job in someone’s foreign legion about now.” She glanced up as a group of people entered the bar— she recognized a famous swindler from Ceres named da Vega, his hands and face covered with expensive, glowing implant jewelry that reminded her of fluorescent slime mold. He was with an all-female group of bodyguards who were supposed to stand between him and any Cerean snatch teams sent to bring him to justice. They were all tall and round-eyed— da Vega liked women that way. He’d tried to recruit Reese when they first met. The pay was generous, round-eyed women being rare here, but sexual favors were supposed to be included.
    One of those jobs, Reese thought. She was tempted to feed him his socks, bodyguards or not, but in the end told him she was used to a better class of employer.
    Da Vega turned to her and smiled. Uzbekistan was suddenly far too small a place.
    Reese finished her mataglap star and stood. “Let’s go for a walk,” she said.
    *
    “An architecture of liberation,” Ken said. “That’s what we’re after. You should read Cheney’s thoughts on the subject.”
    The night street filled with a welling tide of wind. Its alloy surface reflected bright holograms that marched up and down dark storefronts, advertising wares invisible behind dead glass. The wind howled in the latticework of radio receivers pointed at the sky, through a spiky forest of antennae. A minaret outlined by flashing red strobes speared a sky that glowed with yellow sodium light.
    “Liberation,” Reese said. “Right.”
    “Too many closed systems,” Ken said. He shrugged into the collar of his new down jacket. “That’s the problem with space habitats in general— they strive for closed ecological systems, and then try to close as much of their economy as possible. There’s not enough access. I’m a macroeconomist— I work with a lot of models, try to figure out how things are put together— and the most basic obstacle always seems to be the lack of access to data. We’ve got a solar system filled with corporate plutocracies, all competing with each other, none giving free access to anything they’re trying to do. And they’ve got colonies in other solar systems, and nothing about those gets out that the policorps don’t want us to know. The whole situation is far too unstable— it’s impossible to predict what’s going to happen because the data simply isn’t available. Everything’s constructed along the lines of the old Orbital Soviet— not even the people who need the information get the access they require.
    “Prince Station’s main business is processing minerals— that’s okay and it’s steady, but the prices fluctuate a lot as new mineral sources are exploited in the Belt and elsewhere, and it requires heavy capital investment to keep the equipment up to date. So for the sake of a stable station economy, it would be nice for Prince to develop another, steadier source of export. Biologicals, say, or custom-configured databases. Optics. Wetware. Export genetics. Anything. But it takes time and resources— five years’ worth, say— to set something like that up, and there are other policorps who specialize in those areas. We could be duplicating another group’s work, and never know it until suddenly a new product comes onto the