Charles Stross - Singularity Sky

Martin peeled halfway out of his own suit, keeping his legs and lower body in the collapsed plastic bag.

Vassily floated out of his niche, struggling with the flaccid bladder of his helmet: Martin steered him into the hammock and managed to get his head out of the bag before he managed to inhale it. “You’re—” Vassily stopped. “Er, thank you.”

“Don’t even think about hijacking us,” Rachel warned darkly. “The autopilot’s slaved to my voice, and neither of us particularly wants to take our chances with your friends.”

“Er.” Vassily breathed deeply. “Um. That is to say—” He looked around wildly. “Are we going to die?”

“Not if I have anything to do with it,” Rachel said firmly.

“But the enemy ships! They must be—”

“It’s the Festival. Have you got any idea what they are?” asked Martin.

“If you know anything about it, you should have told the Admiral’s staff. Why didn’t you tell them?

Why—”

“We did tell them. They didn’t listen,” Rachel observed.

Vassily visibly struggled to understand. Ultimately, it was easier to change the subject than think the unthinkable. “What are you going to do now?”

“Well.” Rachel whistled tunelessly through her front teeth. “Personally, I’d like to land this lifeboat somewhere near, say, Novy Petrograd, book the honeymoon suite in the Crown Hotel, fill the bathtub with champagne, and lie in it while Martin feeds me caviar on black bread. However, what we actually do next really depends on the Festival, hmm? If Martin is right about it—”

“Believe it,” Martin emphasized.

“—the Navy force is going to quietly disappear, never to be seen again. That’s what comes of assuming that everyone plays by the same set of rules. We’re just going to drift on through, then fire up our motor for a direct landing, meanwhile squawking that we’re neutral at the top of our voices. The Festival isn’t what your leaders think it is, kid. It’s a threat to the New Republic — they got that much right — but they don’t understand what kind of threat it is, or how to deal with it. Going in shooting will only make it respond in kind, and it’s better at it than your boys.”

“But our Navy is good!” Vassily insisted. “They’re the best navy within twenty light-years! What would you anarchists do? You don’t even have a strong government, much less a fleet!” Rachel chuckled. After a moment, Martin joined in. Gradually their laughter mounted, deafening in the confined space.

“Why are you laughing at me?” Vassily demanded indignantly.

“Look.” Martin hunched around in his chair until he could lock eyes with the Procurator. “You’ve grown up with this theory of strong government, the divine right of the ruling class, the thwack of the riding crop of firm administration on the bare buttocks of the urban proletariat and all that. But has it occurred to you that the UN system also works, and has maybe been around for twice as long as the New Republic?

There’s more than one way to run a circus, as I think the Festival demonstrates, and rigid hierarchies like the one you grew up in are lousy at dealing with change. The UN system, at least after the Singularity and the adoption of the planetary unconstitution—” He snorted.

“Once, the fringe anarchists used to think the UN was some kind of quasi-fascist world government.

Back in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, when strong government was in fashion because the whole planetary civilization was suffering from future shock, because it was approaching a Singularity.

After that passed, though — well, there weren’t a lot of viable authoritarian governments left, and the more rigid they were, the less well they could deal with the aftereffects of losing nine-tenths of their populations overnight. Oh, and the cornucopiae: it can’t be pleasant to run a central bank and wake up one morning to discover ninety percent of your taxpayers are gone and the rest think money is obsolete.”

“But the UN is a government—”

“No it isn’t,” Martin insisted. “It’s a talking shop. Started out as a treaty organization, turned into a bureaucracy, then an escrow agent for various transnational trade and standards agreements. After the Singularity, it was taken over by the Internet engineering task force. It’s not the government of Earth; it’s just the only remaining relic of Earth’s governments that your people can recognize. The bit that does the common-good jobs that everyone needs to subscribe to. World-wide vaccination programs, trade agreements with extrasolar governments, insurer of last resort for major disasters, that sort of thing. The point is, for the most part, the UN doesn’t actually do anything; it doesn’t have a foreign policy, it’s just a head on a stick for your politicians to rant about. Sometimes somebody or another uses the UN as a front when they need to do something credible-looking, but trying to get a consensus vote out of the Security Council is like herding cats.”

“But you’re—” Vassily paused. He looked at Rachel.

“I told your Admiral that the Festival wasn’t human,” she said tiredly. “He thanked me and carried right on planning an attack. That’s why they’re all going to die soon. Not enough flexibility, your people. Even trying to run a minor — and horrendously illegal — causality-violation attack wasn’t that original a response.” She sniffed. “Thought they’d turn up a week before the Festival, by way of that half-assed closed timelike path to avoid mines and sleepers. As if the Eschaton wouldn’t notice, and as if the Festival was just another bunch of primitives with atom bombs.” A red light winked on the console in front of her. “Oh, look,” said Martin.

“It’s beginning. Better strap yourself in — we’re way too close for comfort.”

“I don’t understand. What’s going on?” asked Vassily.

Martin reached up to adjust a small lens set in the roof of the cabin, then glanced over his shoulder. “Can you juggle, kid?”

“No. Why?”

Martin pointed at the screen. “Spine ships. Or antibodies. Subsentient remotes armed with, um, you don’t want to know. Eaters and shapers and things . Nasty hungry little nanomachines. Gray goo, in other words.”

“Oh.” Vassily looked ill. “You mean, they’re going to—”

“Come out to meet the fleet and take a sniff, by the look of it. Unfortunately, I don’t think Commodore Bauer realizes that if he doesn’t make friendly noises, they’re all going to die; he still thinks it’s a battle , the kind you fight with missiles and guns. If they do decide to talk — well, the Festival is an infovore.

We’re perfectly safe as long as we can keep it entertained and don’t shoot at it. Luckily, it doesn’t understand humor; finds it fascinating, but doesn’t quite get it. As long as we keep it entertained it won’t eat us; we may even be able to escalate matters to a controlling intelligence that can let us off the Bouncers’ hook and let us land safely.” He reached into the bag of equipment he’d dredged out of the locker behind the seats. “Ready to start broadcasting, Rachel? Here, kid, put this on. It’s showtime.” The red nose floating in the air in front of Vassily’s face seemed to be mocking him.

Sitting in a highly eccentric polar orbit that drifted almost sixty thousand kilometers above the provincial township of Plotsk, the Festival’s prime node basked fat and happy at the heart of an informational deluge. The pickings in this system were sparse compared to some of the previous ports of call on its itinerary, but Rochard’s World was still unusual and interesting. The Festival had chanced upon few primitive worlds in its travel, and the contrast with its memories of them was great.