Peter Watts - Echopraxia

Who could easily get squashed in his sleep. What soldier in combat, no matter how benign, ever gave a thought to the vermin underfoot?

Awake, at least, he might be able to scuttle clear of descending boots.

“You think I’d pass up the chance to do this kind of field work?” he said at last.

Lianna grinned. “Okay then. You know the drill, I’ll let you get yourself together.” She took a bouncing step toward the ladder.

“Valerie,” Brüks blurted out behind her.

She didn’t turn. “In her hab. With her entourage.”

“When the ship was breaking—I saw—”

She tilted her head, lowered her gaze to some point on the far bulkhead. “You see weird things when you go under, sometimes. Near-death experiences, you know?”

Too near . “This was no Tunnel of Light.”

“Hardly ever is.” Lianna reached for the railing. “Brain plays tricks when you turn it on and off. Can’t trust your own perceptions.”

She paused and turned, one hand on the ladder.

“Then again, when can you?”

Moore dropped unsmiling onto the deck as Brüks finished pulling on his jumpsuit. He held a personal tent in one hand, a rolled-up cylinder the size of his forearm. “I hear you’ll be joining us.”

“Try to control your enthusiasm.”

“You’re an extra variable,” the Colonel told him. “I have a great deal of work to do. And we may not have the luxury of keeping an eye on you if things get sticky. On the other hand—” He shrugged. “I can’t imagine deciding any differently, in your shoes.”

Brüks raised his left foot, balanced on his right to scratch at his freshly pinkened ankle (someone had removed the cast during his latest coma). “Believe me, getting in the way’s the last thing I want to do, but this isn’t exactly familiar territory for me. I don’t really know the rules.”

“Just—stay out of the way, basically.” He tossed the tent to Brüks. “You can set up your rack pretty much anywhere you want. The habs are a bit messy—we had to relocate a lot of inventory when they converted the hold—but we’ve also got fewer people living in them for the time being. So find a spot, set up your tent, buckle down. If you need something and the interface can’t help you, ask Lianna. Or me, if I’m not too busy. The Bicamerals will be coming out of decompression in a few days; try to keep out from underfoot. Needless to say that goes double for the vampire.”

“What if the vampire wants me underfoot?”

Moore shook his head. “That’s not likely.”

“She already went out of her way to—to provoke me…”

“How, exactly?”

“You see her arm, after the spoke broke?”

“I did not.”

“She broke it. She broke her own fucking arm. Repeatedly. Said I wasn’t setting it right.”

“But she didn’t attack you. Or threaten you.”

“Not physically. She really seemed to get off on scaring the shit out of me, though.”

The Colonel grunted. “In my experience, those things don’t have to try to scare the shit out of anyone. If she wanted you dead or broken, you would be. Vampires have—idiomatic speech patterns. You may have simply misunderstood her.”

“She called me a cold cut .”

“And Rakshi Sengupta called you a roach . Unless I miss my guess you took that as an insult too.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“Common Tran term. Means so primitive you’re unkillable.”

“I’m plenty killable,” Brüks said.

“Sure, if someone drops a piano on your head. But you’re also field-tested . We’ve had millions of years to get things right; some of those folks in the Hold are packing augments that didn’t even exist a few months ago. First releases can be buggy, and it takes time for the bugs to shake out—and by then, there’s probably another upgrade they can’t afford to pass up if they want to stay current. So they suffer—glitches, sometimes. If anything, roach connotes a bit of envy.”

Brüks digested that. “Well, if it was supposed to be some kind of compliment, her delivery needs work. You’d think someone with all that brainpower would be able to cobble together a few social skills.”

“Funny thing”—Moore’s voice was expressionless—“Sengupta couldn’t figure out how someone with all your interpersonal skills could be so shitty at math.”

Brüks said nothing.

“Don’t take this personally,” the Colonel told him, “but try to keep in mind that we’re guests on this ship and your personal standards—whatever they might be—do not reign supreme here. Dogs are always going to come up short if you insist on defining them as a weird kind of cat. These people are not baselines with a tweak here and there. They’re closer to, to separate cognitive subspecies. As far as Valerie goes, she and her—bodyguards—have pretty much stayed in their hab since the trip began. I expect that to continue. She finds the ambient lighting too bright, for one thing. I doubt you’ll have trouble as long as you don’t go looking for any.”

Brüks felt his mouth tighten at the corners. “So”—remembering the briefing in the Hub, in the company of the envious Rakshi Sengupta—“a week to Icarus?”

“Closer to twelve days,” Moore told him.

“Why so long?”

Moore looked grim. “That fiasco at the monastery. The Crown had to launch prematurely. The sep maneuver was always part of the plan—doesn’t take a hive to know a trip like this is going to draw attention—but the replacement drive’s still in pieces. They’re putting it together as we speak.”

Brüks blinked. “We’ve got no engines at all ?”

“Maneuvering thrusters. Can’t use them yet, not without risking detection.” Moore saw the look on Brüks’s face, added: “Not that I expect we’ll need them in any event. The hive’s ballistic calculations are very accurate. And it’s just as well we’re taking the long way, given the medical situation. The bug was easy enough to fix once they nailed down its specs, but healing takes time and hibernation’s not the same thing as a medical coma. Last thing we want is to hit the zone with our core personnel compromised.” Moore’s face hardened at some grim insight, relaxed again. “My advice? Look on this as an extended sabbatical. Maybe you get a ringside seat to some amazing discoveries; maybe it’s a dead end and you’ll be bored out of your skull. Either way, you can weigh it against a painful death in the Oregon desert and call it a win on points.” He spread his hands. “Here endeth the lesson.”

The lights had been dimmed in the northern hemisphere. Climbing into the Hub Brüks could see a wash of arcane tacticals through the equatorial grille, a chromatic mishmash he knew would make no sense even with an unobstructed view.

“Wrong way,” said a familiar voice as he headed for the next spoke.

Sengupta.

“What?” He couldn’t see her, even through the grille; the mirrorball eclipsed the view. But her voice carried clearly around the chamber: “You visiting the vampire?”

“Uh, no.” God no.

“Then you’re going the wrong way.”

“Thanks.” He second-guessed himself, decided to risk it (hey, she’d started the conversation), swam through the air and bull’s-eyed the moving target of the doorway more through luck than skill.

She was still embedded in her acceleration couch. Her face turned away as soon as he came into view.

She kept up her end, though. “Where you going?”

I don’t know . I don’t have a clue. “Commons. Galley.”

“Other way. Two spokes over.”

“Thanks.”