Alastair Reynolds - Century Rain

He was right: she shouldn’t have recognised it. But she had felt a glimmer of familiarity when she first saw the rotating form. Cassandra’s machines recognised it, even if Auger didn’t.

“Officially, it never should have been possible,” Peter went on. “All stocks were supposed to have been incinerated twenty years ago. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. In blatant violation of the treaty, the Polities held on to a strategic reserve. They even dedicated a small team to making improvements in the weapon.”

“Bastards,” Auger said.

“But don’t be too harsh on them,” Peter said with a glint in his eye, as always knowing exactly what her response would be. “We did just the same. The only difference is that our research teams weren’t quite so inventive. Or, perhaps, clever.” He tilted the display screen so that he was able to look at it for himself. “Really, what the Polity scientists did was very simple. The original Silver Rain was a broad-spectrum anti-biological agent. It couldn’t discriminate between people and plants, or any kind of micro-organism. It infiltrated itself into all living organisms and killed them all at the same preprogrammed moment: that’s why we still have the Scoured Zone on Mars. Very good for destroying an entire ecology… not so good for surgically removing one element of it. But the new strain is able to do just that—it’s human-specific. When it’s done its work, there will be nobody left alive anywhere on E2. In a few weeks there won’t even be corpses. Yet in every other respect the ecosystem will remain untouched. To the rest of nature, it will feel like a brief, bad fever has just ended. A million-year fever called Homo sapiens . The cities will crumble and decay. The dams will crack and collapse. The wilderness will reclaim what was rightfully its own. The animals probably won’t even notice the difference, except that the air will taste a little cleaner to the birds, and the oceans will sound a little quieter to the whales. There won’t even be any nuclear power stations or ships to run out of control, poisoning the world when their masters depart.”

Peter cleared the panel with a flex of his wrist and placed it aside. “Why am I telling you all this, when Niagara already has the weapon? Simply because you are our only hope of stopping this from happening. If that weapon is released into the atmosphere of E2, understand that it will work. There is no realistic probability of failure. No antidote we can release later, and hope that it mops up the replicators before they trigger. The only way to stop this happening is to intercept Niagara before he reaches Earth. If he isn’t intercepted, the murder of three billion souls in E2 will be bad enough. But that’s not the end of it. If the aggressors fail, then I believe we have a hope of ending this insane war before it escalates any further. We may have lost the Earth, but we don’t have to lose the entire system. But if Silver Rain reaches E2, the hardliners on our side will never consent to any ceasefire, even with the moderates. It will go all the way. It will be the end of everything.” He shrugged. “We’ll lose, of course. I just felt you needed to be absolutely clear about that, so that you know what’s at stake.”

“I know,” Auger said. “You didn’t have—”

“I know, I know,” Peter said, nodding. “After all that you’ve gone through, all that you’ve done for us, to have to ask this much more of you… it’s neither fair nor reasonable. But we simply have no alternative. I know you have the strength, Verity. More than that, I know you have the courage. Just do what you can. And then come home to us. You have more friends than you know, and we’re all waiting for you.”

Later, she had another visitor. The dark-haired girl walked into the room without invitation, then stood demurely at the foot of her bed with her hands clasped behind her back, as if awaiting some mild reprimand for late homework.

“I could make myself transparent, if you thought that might help,” Cassandra said.

“Don’t bother. I know you’re not real.”

“I felt it best to appear in person. You don’t mind, do you? Compared to what I’ve already done to you, altering your perceptual feeds seems rather tame.”

“What is this about, Cassandra?”

“It’s about you and me. It’s about what happened to us, and what we do about it.”

“I’m under no illusions,” Auger said. “You hijacked my body to save us in Paris.”

“I also saved myself in the process. I can’t deny that there was a degree of self-interest involved.”

“Why? I’m sure those machines of yours could have hidden themselves out of harm’s way until the danger was over.”

“They could have, but I wouldn’t have survived very long without a host mind. A personality is a fragile thing at the best of times.”

Auger felt some chill sense of what Cassandra had endured. “How much of you…” But she couldn’t find it in herself to finish the question.

“How much of me survived? More than I could have hoped for. A lot less than I would have liked. Mentally, I had time to write a message in a bottle. You’re talking to that message.”

“And your memories?”

“In principle, the machines would only ever have been able to encode and transfer a tiny fraction. My memories feel complete… but thin, like a sketch for a life rather than the thing itself. There’s no texture to them, no sense that I actually lived through those events. I feel as if my life is something that happened to someone else, something I only heard about at second-hand.” She composed herself, looking down at her shoes. “But perhaps that’s what life always feels like. The trouble is, I can’t remember if there was a difference before I died.”

“I’m sorry, Cassandra.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong—it’s better than being dead. And when we sort out this mess, there’ll always be a chance that I can reintegrate backed-up memories from the Polity mnemonic archives. If they survive.”

“I hope they do.”

“We’ll see. The main thing is that I’ve made it this far. I have you to thank for that, Auger. You could have refused me.”

“I don’t remember a discussion taking place.”

Cassandra gave a half-smile. “Well, it didn’t take very long, I’ll admit. And in the process of me storming your brain, you probably lost the last few seconds of your short-term memory. But I assure you I had your permission to do what needed to be done.”

“You saved us,” Auger said. “And when I was injured, when Floyd came back to rescue me, you stayed with me.”

“What else was I supposed to do?”

“You could have fled my body… abandoned me in Paris. I’m sure your machines would have coped until they found another host. You could have made do with Floyd, after all.”

“You have the wrong idea about us,” Cassandra said. “I would never have abandoned you. I would rather have died than live with that.”

“Then I’m grateful.”

“You saved me as well. After all that has gone between us, it was nothing I counted on. You have my thanks, Auger. I just hope that in some way this has taught both of us a lesson.”

“I was the one who needed the lesson,” Auger said. “I hated you because you told the truth about me.”

“Then I’ll make a small confession. Even as I was preparing to testify against you, I admired your dedication. You had the fire in your belly.”

“It nearly burnt me.”

“But at least you cared. At least you were ready to do something.”

“This little mess,” Auger said, “is all because of people who were ready to do something. People like me, who always know when they’re right and everyone else is wrong. Maybe what we need is a few less of us.”