Питер Уоттс - The Freeze-Frame Revolution

“For how long?”

“Long as it takes. I’ll even give you a survivor, so you can call the mission a success.”

“Just one?”

“Dao stays with me. Another unfortunate fatality. It’s how we build up the ranks.” She gestured at her entourage. “You never noticed the uptick in industrial accidents over the past few gigs?”

“I never really checked,” I admitted. “Li—this is crazy.”

“You said that last time. But here you are.”

Her eyes glinted in shadow. She held herself in a way I’d never seen on her before.

“Even if you manage to stay hidden, what are you going to do from down here? Kill the Chimp?”

“Eventually, yeah.”

“We don’t even know where the hypervisor is at any given time. We don’t know all the places it could be. And if you get really lucky and take it out, the next one boots faster than you can spit.”

“Why, Sunday,” Lian said mildly. “If I didn’t know better I’d be starting to wonder if you’re completely on board with this thing. “

I tried for a lighter touch. “Levi probably shouldn’t have sent me the invite, then.”

“You didn’t leave him much choice. Way he tells it, you were about to sell us out.”

“I didn’t, though.”

“No,” she said. “You didn’t.”

“You knew I wouldn’t.” Somehow, she knew . “I mean, that was a pretty specific overture. That was for me .”

“That was for you, someday. When we were sure. You forced our hand.”

“Still.”

“Of course it was for you. You’re my friend.”

Her friend . I thought of Monoce rus. I thought of the silver gremlin. This very glade, aeons ago.

Not a very good one.

Maybe this time I can do better.

I began: “How exactly are you going to do it?”

“Watch me.”

“Does everyone else get the same ringside seat? You gonna wake up thirty thousand people—”

“Twenty-seven.”

“—one by one, sneak ’em all down here, fill them in on the plan? Do we all get a vote?”

“That would take forever. We’ve already waited that long.”

“So you’re making that call for everyone. Unilaterally.”

“I’m not entirely alone down here.”

“Hardly a quorum. And even if you had one—we’re one tribe, Lian. Out of six hundred .”

“Someone has to make the call.”

“Then what makes y—what makes us any better than the Chimp?”

“That’s easy. Chimp’s the one who’ll deprecate you the moment your utility function drops too far. I’m the one trying to keep everyone alive.” Shades of darkness shifted across her face. “What about you, Sunday? Why are you here?”

“I’m not interested in a—raging vendetta, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I’ve already got enough raging vendetta for a fucking army. Answer the question.”

I’d never seen her so assured before. How many shifts had she been up while I was down? How many two-week builds, how many hidden resurrections, had it taken to grow that spine?

“I’m waiting.”

“Because—” I began, and stopped.

“Because you had three thousand coffins to choose fro m.” It felt like a confession. It felt like a betrayal.

“I can work with that.” She took my hand. She helped me to me feet.

Her face came into the light.

I wobbled, and stared. The renewed complaints from my leg barely registered.

“Something wrong?” The edge of a smile deepened the lines on her face.

“You’re old ,” I said softly.

“Someone’s gotta put in a few extra hours.” A fierce grin. “Chimp’s not gonna overthrow himself. Besides”—she bent to retrieve my machete from the cave floor—“given how often that thing calls you up on deck, I’m really just catching up.” She hefted the machete, sliced off a thorn from the still-twitching vine.

I put a hand to my face.

“ Ow! What the fuck , Lian!”

Kaden was clutching hir right arm where Lian had stabbed it with the dismembered thorn. She stabbed again as I watched, in the thigh this time. Kaden howled and went down. Dao took a step forward; one of his companions clapped a hand on his shoulder and he quieted.

“Sorry, kid. Verisimilitude.” Lian turned and handed me my machete. “We have to get you briefed.”

Finally I noticed: how the figures flanking Dao leaned in just a bit too close, how they didn’t so much lurk as loom . How very, very still Dao was suddenly holding himself.

It was starting to sink in.

Lian Wei was past the point of needing friends.

I crutched Kaden back to the exit, hir good arm around my shoulder, our respective good legs taking the weight of our respective bad ones. Kaden’s wounds went deeper than mine; se hissed, clenched hir teeth with each step as we hobbled away from the light. Eri ’s singularity, close below, added weight to every step.

“She’s changed,” I said.

“Had to,” se gritted. “Put this whole thing together while you were sleeping with the enemy.”

I let hir take more of hir weight on the next step—

“Shhhhit…”

—and took it back, point made. “We’re all sleeping with the enemy, Kaden. Anyone who wasn’t would’ve been dead a thousand builds ago.”

“If you say so.”

“It’s inspiring to see you show such generosity to someone who just came within a few centimeters of slicing open your femoral artery.”

“Like she said. Gotta sell this.” Kaden’s face turned toward me; in the dark, it might as well have been a radar dish. “She better be right about you.”

“Right?”

“That you don’t come around easy. But when you’re in you’re in.”

“You think she’s wrong?”

“Think she’s dead right. Stick by your friends, no question. Maybe even when they turn out to be mass murderers.” Se grunted. “Always were Chimp’s pet. I wasn’t the only one who found it creepy.”

Chimp’s pet . I turned the words over in my head as we paused to catch our breath. When did they hang that cute little term of endearment around my neck?

“So why you going along with this?”

“You went four builds, never breathed a word. You were gonna sell us out, would’ve done it already.”

We started forward again. The hatch beckoned in the distance, piecemeal brightness filtering through mutant undergrowth.

I remembered two ’spores, and a third between. “Dao’s not exactly on board, is he?”

“He’ll come around.”

“What if he doesn’t?”

Kaden stopped again. Turned.

“Lian trusts you,” se said. “Don’t know why, but I guess she’s got her reasons. And I trust her, so here we are. Plus it would obviously help if we could harness that sick Chimp-Sunday dynamic of yours. Things’d go a lot easier if we had someone with a bit of pull.”

“But.”

“But the fact that you didn’t run to the Chimp doesn’t make you an ally. Maybe figured we’d stop you. Maybe just too chickenshit to take a side.” Se turned, and kept going, and I almost didn’t notice that se hadn’t answered my question.

“I guess we’ll find out,” I said. One last vine, thick as my leg, squirmed off the path at our approach. “Act wounded. We’re on.”

“Chimp! Gurney!” But one was already gliding into view down the slope, its clamshell lid gaping in anticipation of fresh meat.

“It’s good to see you, Kaden,” Chimp remarked as I helped hir onto the pallet. “How are you feeling?”

“Great.” Kaden winced, lay back, let the gurney close over hir. Probing snakes, thin as fiberop, swarmed hir wounds.