She glanced over and saw only Ramirez’s handsome profile, the glossy forelock falling over his brow. “Not thinking things through ahead of time isn’t like you,” she said.
“Oh, but it is. You’d be amazed at how stupid I can be when it really matters.” He leaned forward against the railing, rested his head on his folded arms, and looked at her. “When you’re running at eight billion operations per picosecond, it’s astonishing how fast a bad judgment call can snowball. Let alone the real idiocies.”
She smoked in silence for a while, letting the ash fall off the tip of her cigarette and spiral down toward the distant floor like coal-colored snowflakes.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“In what sense?”
“Come on, Cohen. I don’t have the energy for your games right now.”
“It’s not a game with you. It never has been.”
She turned to find him still staring at her, Ramirez’s eyes intent and motionless. Why had she never noticed how extraordinarily white the whites of his eyes were, how sharp and fine the line between light and dark was where the white met the iris?
The dome fell silent, except for the whoosh of filtered air pushing through the antiquated life-support system and the faint crackle of the ash burning down on Li’s cigarette.
She swung her feet out over the void, and one foot struck Ramirez’s. “Sorry,” she said.
“It’s fine,” Cohen said.
She moved her legs a little away from his.
“I was thinking about Alba,” he said after a moment. “You passed out before we got you inside. Well, before I got you inside. I was so terrified we’d be too late, I snatched Arkady and did everything myself. Poor kid. He was very gracious about it. Still, it looked tight there for a while. Really tight. I thought we’d all had it.”
He lit a cigarette, put it to his lips—and then made a frustrated face and put it out on the railing.
“That sort of moment puts you in a regretful mood,” he said. “Makes you wonder if you’ve wasted time.”
“You can’t let yourself think that way,” Li told him. “You’ll drive yourself crazy.”
“Oh, I’m years past worrying about that, I assure you.”
“What do you mean?” Li asked, as the oddness of what Cohen had said about Alba struck her. “What do you mean you thought we’d had it? You can’t… you have backups, don’t you?”
“In theory.”
“But I thought—”
“Of course I have backups. But so far, only four full sentients have actually had their critical systems go down. None of the backups worked for any of them.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?” Li asked, cringing at the self-justifying edge in her voice. “Why didn’t I know about it? I’ve never heard of an AI dying.”
“It’s not dying exactly. They just… they’re not themselves anymore. There’s no there there. If that makes any sense.”
“I would never have asked for your help if I’d known that.”
“Then it’s a good thing you didn’t know, isn’t it?”
“There’s nothing good about it, Cohen.”
He twitched impatiently. “Don’t waste my time wallowing in guilt because I’m doing what I want to do. It’s beneath you.”
He’d left the pack of cigarettes lying on the grating between them, and Li pulled out a second one, lit it, and took a shaky drag. “What about the mine?” she asked, knowing already what the answer would be. “What happens when we have to get you into the glory hole?”
“Same thing. I download the criticals and anything else we can store off-line. That’s what Ramirez is setting up.”
“Sweet Mary,” Li said. “I know what you told Korchow but… you’re not really going to download everything onto some home-brewed Freetown system, are you?”
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
“What the hell for? Why trust them? How do you know they won’t…” She couldn’t finish the thought.
“I don’t know,” he said, his eyes locked on her face. “But I’m the only one who can give them what they’re looking for. And as long as that’s the case, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to trust them. Besides.” He smiled. “I like their plans. They’re ambitious and idealistic.”
“They’re crazy!”
“That’s not so obvious,” Cohen said, his voice as level as if he weren’t talking about the people who were going to hold his life in their hands a few days from now. “There’s no arguing with the fact that someone or something has taken over the field AI. And Cartwright’s convinced me that he has, if not total control, at least significant influence over whoever or whatever it is.”
“What if it’s the Consortium controlling the field AI, Cohen? They won’t cut you any slack, you’ve told me as much.”
“It’s not them,” Cohen said. He sounded bemused, dreamy. “I felt it when Cartwright was showing me what he’s done. It’s… I don’t know what it is. But I want to know.” He shook off whatever daydream had caught him. “Besides, Leo’s bunch is doing good work. They’re building their network to last. And to work in the mine, too. I’ve never seen so much sheathing go into one system.”
“How much sheathing they’re using isn’t the point—”
“No, it’s not. The point is what I was trying to tell you before your little crisis of conscience. When you were out there and I didn’t think we were going to get to you in time, I realized I might wake up in a few days and not know anything about what had happened except that we left for Alba together… and you never came back. And I’ll tell you, Catherine, though God knows I ought to know better by now than to even think about telling you such things, it made me not want to wake up.”
She didn’t answer.
“I can’t go back to before you,” he said. “I couldn’t if I wanted to. But I can’t stand on the threshold waiting for you to make up your mind either. Not forever. I know that’s not what you want me to tell you, but it’s true. You’re breaking my heart. Or whatever you want to call it.” He looked away, and when he spoke again he sounded almost embarrassed. “And I think you’re throwing away something you shouldn’t.”
Li’s face felt cold, her hands and feet numb, as if all the blood had been drained from her body. The rain was falling harder now, pooling at the edges of the geodesic panels and sheeting down the dome’s curve like tears. She watched it fall and tried to pull something, some excuse for an answer out of the void inside her.
“I don’t want to watch you hurt yourself,” she said at last.
“I could say the same to you.”
She leaned her head on her hands and looked down between her feet, measuring the drop to the floor. She felt dislocated, as if her brain and her emotions were half a step behind reality. “You’re asking for something I don’t have to give.”
“I don’t believe that for a minute.”
She turned and stared at him. “You think I’m stringing you along?”
“If I thought that, I wouldn’t be here. No. I think you love me. In fact, I’m sure you do.”
“You’ve got a pretty high opinion of yourself.”
“No. I just know you.”
She snorted. “Because you spend half your time spying on me.”
Ramirez’s lips twisted in a wry, self-deprecating smile that was all Cohen. “You know perfectly well that I wouldn’t do it if you actually minded. And if you didn’t love me at least a little, you damn well would mind. Q.E.D.”
“Q.E. what?”
“It’s Latin, you little heathen.”
“Yeah.” She put her cigarette to her lips. “The Romans put Latin on their sewer covers. It didn’t make their shit smell any sweeter.”