“Defectors and traitors like me,” said a man’s voice from behind them.
Auger turned to face a slender, sleekly muscled individual of uncertain age. He moved within a silver cloud of attendant machines, twinkling at the limit of vision. Auger stepped back, but the man raised a reassuring hand and closed his eyes. The cloud of machines diminished, sucked back into his pores like a time-lapse explosion in reverse.
Standing before her now, he looked almost human.
The latest generation of Slashers—as Auger had forgotten to her cost with Cassandra—were often indistinguishable from children. This neotenous trend was a matter of efficient resource utilisation: smaller people not only used fewer consumables but were also easier to move around—an important factor even given the near-limitless power of the Slasher bleed-drive. But this Slasher man looked fully adult, albeit youthful. Either he predated the neotenics (and their unstable prototypes, the war babies) or he belonged to one of the factions that retained some nostalgic bond with old-style humanity.
He had flawless, unlined skin the colour of honey, and liquid brown and slightly sad-looking eyes that none the less glittered with an easy enthusiasm. Despite the chamber being too cold for Auger’s tastes, the man wore only a single layer of clothing: simple white trousers and a white shirt loosely cinched across his chest.
“This is Niagara,” said Skellsgard. “As you might have gathered, he’s a citizen of the Federation of Polities.”
“It’s all right,” Niagara said. “I won’t be the least bit offended if you call me a Slasher. You probably regard the term as an insult.”
“Isn’t it?” Auger asked, surprised.
“Only if you want it to be.” Niagara made a careful gesture, like some religious benediction: a diagonal slice across his chest and a stab to the heart. “A slash and a dot,” he said. “I doubt it means anything to you, but this was once the mark of an alliance of progressive thinkers linked together by one of the very first computer networks. The Federation of Polities can trace its existence right back to that fragile collective, in the early decades of the Void Century. It’s less a stigma than a mark of community.”
“And do you care about that community?” Auger asked.
“In a broad sense, yes. But I’m not above betraying it if I think its longer term interests are best served that way. How much do you know about the current tensions in the Polities?”
“Enough.”
“Well, let me refresh your memory on the basics. There are now two opposing factions within the Federation: the aggressors and the moderates. Both parties broadly support the same goal of repairing the Earth. Where they differ is in their approach to the USNE. The moderates are happy to negotiate access to Earth via reciprocal deals: access to the hyperweb, licensed use of bleed-drive and UR technologies, that sort of thing.”
“Eve was only tempted by one apple,” Auger said. “The USNE still remembers what your brilliant machines did to our planet.”
“None the less, the offer is on the table. As you’ll have gathered from your dealings with Cassandra, the moderates are serious about this proposal.”
“And the aggressors?”
“The aggressors take the view that the USNE will never sign a deal with the moderates—that there are too many people who think like you, Verity. So why wait for something that will never happen? Why not just take Earth now, by force?”
“They wouldn’t.”
“They can and they will. The only thing stopping them has been a certain trepidation: the fear that the Threshers would destroy Earth rather than let it fall into Slasher hands. A ‘scorched-earth’ policy in the most literal sense. Tanglewood is more than just an orbital community. It’s also a repository for enough targeted megatonnage to turn the Earth into a glowing cinder.”
“So what’s changed?”
“Everything,” Nigara said. “For one thing, the battle planners think they may be able to take Tanglewood quickly enough to prevent those warheads from being deployed en masse. Even if they can’t, the new models for repairing the Earth suggest that the warhead strike could be… tolerated. We can brush radioactivity under the carpet using continental subduction zones. And when we restock the planet, the re-introduced organisms will be modified to tolerate an enhanced level of background radiation.”
Auger shuddered, imagining what that kind of tectonic reorganisation implied for her beloved cities. “So an invasion is inevitable?”
“I’m saying it is rather more likely now than it was six months ago. That’s why some of us—moderates—have long advocated a strengthening of the Thresher position. Call it a deterrent.”
“And it’s that simple? You help us make this alien junk work just so that we will have a chance of standing up to your own people when the shit comes down?”
“Would it help if I made it sound more complicated than it really is?”
“Excuse me if I don’t take you at your word, Niagara, but I’ve only met two Slashers in my life and one of them was a lying little shit.”
“If it’s any consolation,” he said, “Cassandra is one of the staunchest moderates in the entire movement. If you ever needed a friend in the Polities, she’s it.”
Skellsgard interposed herself between Auger and the Slasher, holding up her hands as if blocking a fight. “I know this comes as a shock,” she said to Auger, “but they really aren’t all villains who’d sooner see us wiped out of existence.”
“Believe me, I sympathise with your position,” Niagara said to Auger. “I know that terraforming Earth would erase your life’s work. I’m simply of the opinion that the end would justify the means.”
“Do you believe that, Niagara: that the end always justifies the means?” Auger asked.
“Mostly,” he said. “And some would say that—judging by your own track record—you share something of the same philosophy.”
“Over your dead body.”
“Or the dead body of a boy?” He shook his head. “Sorry. That was uncalled for. But the point remains: you’ve always had a certain unflinching instinct for what needs to be done to achieve a particular outcome. I admire that, Verity. I think you have every chance of completing this mission.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” she said. “How much do you know about all this?”
“I know that sensitive property has gone missing at the other end of that hyperweb connection, and that you are excellently equipped to recover it.”
“Why can’t you recover it?”
“Because I don’t know the territory like you do. Nor does Skellsgard, or Aveling, or anyone else in this organisation. The only person who did know it well enough was Susan White, and she’s dead.”
“That’s a detail Caliskan didn’t quite get around to telling me.”
“Would it have made a difference to your decision?”
“It might.”
“Then he was right not to mention it. But there’s more to my answer than you might be aware of. It’s not just that I don’t know the territory. I can’t even enter it—I would die if I tried.”
“And me?”
“You won’t find it a problem.” Niagara turned to face the transport that had just been loaded into the bubble. Technicians were still attending to various details around the outside, but everything about their actions suggested that all was going according to plan.
“You want me to get in that thing, don’t you? Without a clue as to what’s at the other end.”
“It’s a thirty-hour journey,” Niagara said. “There’ll be plenty of time to catch up on the way.”
“Can I back out?”
“It’s a little late for that now, don’t you think?” Without waiting for an answer from Auger, he turned his attention to Skellsgard. “Is she ready for her language lesson?”