“These guys?”
“Bicams. Post-Humans.”
“They’re not post-Human. Not yet.”
“How can you tell?” It was only half a joke.
“Because otherwise we wouldn’t be able to talk to them at all.”
Brüks swallowed a bolus of faux French toast. “They could talk to us. Some of them, anyway.”
“Why would they bother? We’re on the verge of losing them as it is. And—do you have children, Daniel?”
He shook his head. “You?”
“A son. Siri’s not exactly baseline himself, actually. Nowhere near the far shore, but even so it’s been difficult to—connect, sometimes. And maybe this comparison won’t mean much to you, but—they’re all our children, Humanity’s children, and even now we can barely keep their interest . Once they tip over that edge…” He shrugged. “How long would it take you to decide you had better things to do than talk to a bunch of capuchins?”
“They’re not gods,” Brüks reminded him softly.
“Not yet.”
“Not ever.”
“That’s denial.”
“Better than genuflection.”
Moore smiled, a bit ruefully. “Come on, Daniel. You know how powerful science can be. A thousand years to climb from ghosts and magic to technology; a day and a half from technology back up to ghosts and magic.”
“I thought they didn’t use science,” Brüks said. “I thought that was the whole point.”
Moore granted it with a small nod. “Either way, you put baselines against Bicamerals and the Bicamerals are going to be a hundred steps ahead every time.”
“And you’re comfortable with that.”
“My comfort doesn’t enter into it. Just the way it is.”
“You seem so—fatalistic about it all.” Brüks pushed his empty plate aside. “The far shore, the gulf between giants and capuchins.”
“Not fatalism,” Moore corrected him. “Faith.”
Brüks glanced sharply across the table, trying to decide if Moore was yanking his chain. The soldier stared back impassively.
“The fact that something shot us,” Brüks continued deliberately. “And you yourself said they’re probably Tran.”
“I did, didn’t I?” Moore seemed to find that amusing. “Fortunately we’ve got a pretty good team of those in our own corner. Honestly, I wouldn’t worry.”
“You trust them too much,” Brüks said quietly.
“So you keep saying. You don’t know them the way I do.”
“You think you know them? You’re the one who called them giants. We don’t know their agendas any more than we know what those smart clouds are up to. At least smart clouds don’t open up your brain and dig around like, like…”
Moore didn’t say anything for a moment. Then: “Lianna.”
“You know what they did to her?”
“Not exactly.”
“That’s exactly my point. No one does. Lianna doesn’t know. They shut her off for four days, and when she woke up she was some kind of Chinese Room savant. Who knows what they did to her brain? Who knows if she’s the same person?”
“She’s not,” Moore said flatly. “Change the wiring, change the machine.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“She agreed to it. She volunteered. She worked her ass off and elbowed her way to the front of the line just for the chance to make the cut.”
“It’s not informed consent.”
That raised eyebrow again. “How so?”
“How can it be, when the person giving it is cognitively incapable of understanding what she’s agreeing to?”
“So you’re saying she’s mentally incompetent,” Moore said.
“I’m saying we all are. Next to the hives, and the vampires, and the thumbwirers and that whole—”
“We’re children.”
“Yes.”
“Who can’t be trusted to make our own decisions.”
Brüks shook his head. “Not about things like this, no.”
“We need adults to make those choices on our behalf.”
“We—” He fell silent.
Moore watched him above the ghost of a smile. After a moment he pulled the Glenmorangie off the wall.
“Have a drink,” he said. “Helps the future go down easier.”
Crawling unseen through the viscera of its host, the parasite takes control.
Daniel Brüks drilled into the central nervous system of the Crown of Thorns and bent it to his will. Lianna, as usual, was back in the Hold with her helpless omnipotent masters. Sengupta’s icon glowed in the Hub. Moore was ostensibly in the Dorm but the feed from that hab put the lie to it: only his body was there, running on autopilot while his closed eyes danced through some ConSensual realm Brüks could only imagine.
He was going to be eating alone.
The anxiety had become chronic by now. It nagged at the bottom of his brain like a toothache, had become so much a part of him that it went unnoticed save for those times when some unexpected chill brought it all back. Panic attacks; in the spokes, in the habs, in his own goddamn tent. They didn’t happen often, and they never lasted long. Just often enough to remind him. Just long enough to keep him paranoid.
The blade began to twist as he ascended the spoke. Brüks gritted his teeth, briefly closed his eyes as the conveyer pulled him past the Zone of Terror (it helped, really it did), relaxed as the haunted zone receded beneath him. He released the handhold at the top of the spoke and coasted into the Hub, crossed the antarctic hatch (half contracted now, barely wide enough for the passage of a body) pushed himself toward—
A soft wet sound. A cough from the northern hemisphere, a broken breath.
Someone crying.
Sengupta was up there. Had been a few minutes ago, at least.
He cleared his throat. “Hello?”
A brief rustle. Silence and ventilators.
Ohhkay…
He resumed his course, crossed to the Commons spoke, twisted and jackknifed through. He allowed himself a moment of self-congratulation as he grabbed the conveyer and started down headfirst, smoothly swinging around the handhold until his feet pointed down; just two days ago all these drainpipes and variable-gravity straightaways would have left him completely disoriented.
Valerie tagged him halfway.
He never saw her coming. He had his face to the bulkhead. There may have been a flicker of overhead shadow, just a split second before that brief touch between his shoulder blades: like a knife’s edge sliding along his spine, like being unzipped down the back. His back brain reacted before he was even aware of the contact, flattened and froze him like a startled rabbit. By the time he could move again she was past and gone and Daniel Brüks was still alive.
He looked down, down that long tunnel she’d sailed headfirst and without a sound. She was waiting at the bottom of the spoke: white and naked and almost skeletal. Wiry corded muscle stretched over bone. Her right foot tapped a strange and disquieting pattern on the metal.
The conveyer was delivering him into her arms.
He released the handhold, lunged across the spoke for the static safety of the ladder. He missed the first rung he grabbed for, caught the second; leftover momentum nearly popped his shoulder from its socket. His feet scrabbled for purchase, finally found it. He clung to the ladder as the conveyer streamed past to each side, going up going down.
Valerie looked up at him. He looked away.
She just touched me for Christ’s sake. I barely even felt it. It was probably an accident.