Netlink by William H Keith Page A

and to leave very little to the imagination.
    It was well past Second Eclipse, and the long Newamie day was slowly fading into night. Gloglobes hung suspended on their magnetics, and radiant pools cast soft, pastel ripples across the stonework. Inside, the gathering room and the broad atrium were crowded, with people spilling out onto the back patio. Viewalls displayed shifting, abstract patterns, matched by the vividly glowing floor display. Servots floated on hidden maglev traces set into the floor, passing out drinks and food as quickly as people would take them. Animated conversation mingled with the soft tones of neural harmonics floating from hidden speakers. New America might still be a frontier society, lacking the more civilized amenities of old Earth and the Shakai—the upper-class society of the Imperium—but the people did appreciate a good party.
    She identified herself and Ran to the servot greeting each new guest, and then they walked into the house’s atrium. Her mother was there, literally radiant in pastel skin tones and holographic light. “Kara!” her mother cried, reaching out and hugging her. “Thanks for coming.”
    “Your invitation didn’t leave a lot of options open,” Kara replied. “Mums? You remember Lieutenant Ran Ferris.”
    “Of course, Lieutenant. How are you?”
    “Fine, Senator.” He gazed around the atrium. “A nice party.”
    “Thank you.”
    “So,” Kara said. “Is Daren here tonight?”
    “He should be.” She sounded distracted. “He’s working late at the university tonight, but he promised he’d be out as soon as he could get away.”
    “Mums? You okay? You seem preoccupied.”
    “No. No, I’m just tired.” Katya looked at her daughter. “I… know you’d rather be elsewhere tonight.” A smile tugged at her lips. “Both of you.”
    Sometimes, Kara thought, her mother could be a little too observant. Or was it that Kara herself was too transparent? In an information-intensive culture, it became harder and harder to maintain a polite mask. Even after the Rebellion, many aspects of New American culture were still drawn from the Imperial Shakai, such as the need to present a neutral face. In Nihongo, the word for one’s physical face, men, was the same as the word for “mask.”
    “I’m always glad to see you, Mums. You know that.”
    “Hey! Kara! Good to see you!”
    Kara turned at the voice. At first she didn’t recognize the speaker, though the voice was familiar. The nude man standing in front of her possessed skin that was a rich, light-drinking ebony, and she couldn’t see his features well enough to be able to place the face.
    “Hello, Senator!” the black-skinned man added cheerfully.
    “Hello, Geoff,” Katya said. “Enjoying yourself?”
    A name and a position dropped into her mind, thanks to her mother’s use of the name: Geoff Rawlins, one of her mother’s executive assistants.
    “Sure am.” He looked Kara up and down appraisingly. “Still in uniform, huh? You should do something about that.” He grinned at her, his teeth and the whites of his eyes startlingly bright against the black skin. It was hard to look at the man without staring. She could tell he wanted her to ask.
    “Okay, I’ll jack in,” she said. “When did you become a worshipper?”
    She’d heard about sun worshippers, of course. They wore yet another type of Naga expression, one that transformed the outer cells of their skin to jet black, the better to absorb every watt of sunlight that fell on their skin, then incorporated it into the worshipper’s metabolism as additional energy. They still had to eat—sunlight couldn’t provide enough energy even over a couple of square meters of skin to keep a human going long with no other input—but they claimed that taking a substantial part of their nourishment this way was more natural, and healthier, than old-fashioned eating.
    “A couple months ago,” he told her. He held one hand out and looked at it, turning