Cold as Ice by Charles Sheffield

there'll be no doubt as to what you do. Who knows? Maybe you'll get some priceless footage." Nell stepped back and surveyed the result. "How do you feel?"
    "Strange." Jon hardly recognized himself in the all-around mirrors. She had done something peculiar to his hair, greying and thickening it around his temples and ears and trimming it at the front.
    "You look great. We'll walk over. By the time we get there, you'll be adjusted to your fine feathers. Let's go."
    The trek back up the hill in the deepening twilight was a revelation. Other pedestrians gave them one look and moved out of the way. Even the children on the little carts veered aside.
    "The protective aura of wealth." Nell had taken his arm and was looking straight ahead, ignoring the people around them. "Even fake wealth."
    "I thought this sort of thing was supposed to have ended with the war."
    "Spoken like a true scientist. That's one of the lessons of history. It never ends, and it never will. Not as long as people are people." She squeezed his arm and stared haughtily down her nose at a man who was slow in getting out of their way.
    The meeting hall itself stood on a western slope, facing over the strait and toward the distant ocean. A dozen men in uniform hovered around the entrance. They watched closely until the tickets that Nell produced were verified. Jon stood by, nervously fingering his slick lapels.
    "I thought we were in real trouble," he said softly when they were finally admitted. "All those guards."
    "Not for us." She squeezed his arm again. "Lighten up, dear."
    "For who, then?"
    "There's been talk around the studios that Bounders might be coming here in force to cause trouble. An Inner Circle dinner would be one of their natural targets."
    "But that's ridiculous. Outward Bound needs the Mobies. Cyrus Mobarak ought to be a Bounder hero."
    "He ought to be, and for all I know, he is. But Security doesn't have the sense to understand that, so they're hunting for Bounders behind every garbage can." She tugged at his arm. "Don't go that way, dearie. We're tolerated because they want publicity, and we'll even be fed. But you don't get to sit with the real Inner Circle."
    The dining room contained ten round tables, each one holding place settings for eight. Nell led the way to a small, bare bench, half-hidden from the main floor and offering a good camera view of the head table on its dais. A man and two women were setting up cameras on the bench. Nell nodded to them, and they gave Jon an incurious glance before they went back to work.
    Cyrus Mobarak was already at the head table, chatting with a woman in uniform on his immediate left. Jon Perry studied him as the service of the meal began. He found the examination oddly unsatisfying. Mobarak was in his middle-to-late forties. Seated, he appeared to be short and strongly built, with a thick neck that bulged against the blue-and-white wing collar. His suit was plain grey, lacking medals, decorations, or jewelry. His nose was prominent. He bore a thick shock of greying hair, and his brow ridges overhung pale, vacant-seeming eyes. He ate lightly, pecking at most of the dishes that were served, and he seemed to listen and nod a lot more than he spoke. By contrast with the glittering, bejeweled, and medal-laden audience of Inner Circle members, he was unimpressive.
    "Well, what did you expect?" asked Nell when Perry commented on how normal Mobarak looked. "A ten-foot giant covered with red hair? It was one of the early discoveries and big disappointments of my career. Great men—and great women—mostly don't look different from anyone else. My job would be a lot easier if they did."
    "But they —" Jon jerked his head toward the audience.
    "—are not great people." Nell was leaning close. "It's heresy to suggest it, especially in this room, but the Inner Circle are only wealth , just old wealth and nothing more. The woman next to Cyrus Mobarak has the brain of a clam, and she got her high-level job through