David Williams - The Machinery of Light

And subsides.

“Wrong answer,” says Control.

“Fucking bastard,” she says.

“What I am is incidental. What matters is what you are.”

“I’m Claire Hask—”

More pain. Control’s voice seeps slowly through:

“We might agree to call you Claire for the sake of convenience. But what you really are is Manilishi.”

She says nothing.

“Isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” she says slowly. “That’s right.”

“And what is Manilishi?”

“Isn’t that the big question—”

“I’m not asking for the full answer,” snaps Control. “You don’t know. I realize that. That makes two of us. Just tell me what you do know.”

“I’m a biocomputer able to perform hacks faster than the speed of light.”

“And how do you do that?”

“I don’t know.”

Control says nothing.

“I don’t know,” she repeats. “I’ve tried—”

“So what would you guess?”

“I’d guess retrocausality.”

“I’d say we can do more than guess.”

“Signals from the future,” she mutters.

“Could there be another explanation?”

“It’s not much of a fucking explanation.”

“Then perhaps we should think of it as a start.”

So let’s see if I’ve got this straight,” says Riley. “You and Sarmax and Lynx were the first out of the gate, but—”

“What is this, true confessions?”

“Call it what you like,” says Maschler.

“You’re beaming everything I say back to Montrose.”

“So what if we are?”

“Let me speak to her.”

Maschler laughs. “I think you overestimate the smoothness of your tongue.”

“Not to mention our ability to get her on the line,” adds Riley.

“She’s too busy losing the final war, huh?”

“Take it like a man,” says Maschler. “Can’t talk to the judge after she’s handed down the verdict, can you?”

“She’s under no illusions,” says Riley. “She took your measure, Carson. Overmighty subject plotting for the day when—”

“I’m not sure I’d agree with the word subject.”

“And therein lies the problem,” says Maschler. “No one who became the Rain ever did.”

“Only three people ever became the Rain,” says the Operative.

Riley shrugs. “An imprecise term,” he says. “But I think we’re on the same page. The danger of creating the ultimate hit team, eh? Three were modified and the rest were born to it—engineered from the very start—but all of them shared the same lust to dominate all else. And all of them went through a similar process. One that—”

“Linked minds,” says the Operative.

“And how much do you know about the actual process?” asks Riley.

The Operative laughs. “Only one man knows what counts.”

It starts with Matthew Sinclair,” says Haskell.

“Of course it does,” replies Control.

“He set it all in motion.”

“But what was all of it?”

She hesitates. “That’s a control question?”

“I daresay we’re starting to move beyond them.”

She shrugs. The light around her seems to be shifting as though it’s water—like waves rising and receding, but it’s still as opaque as ever. She glances down at her hands and wonders what’s happened to her real body—wonders if she’s being operated on in a far more comprehensive fashion than Carson attempted. Perhaps her flesh has already been disposed of. Perhaps it was never that critical anyway. Maybe Montrose and her AI jackal have managed to figure out the part of her that really matters. Or maybe—

“Sinclair said something to me once.”

“You sure it was him?”

She ignores this. “He told me that every cell of me computes.”

“Are you asking if we’ve carved you up yet?”

“I guess so,” she says.

“We’re keeping our options open.”

“Great.”

“Though perhaps your options are foreclosed, no? With information from the future tossed into the mix, who knows what the ramifications upon the present are?”

“It’s all tactical,” she says. “Short-range. I’ve got maybe a second or so advantage when I’m running hacks and that’s—”

“Still more than enough to allow you to lacerate any normal razor. And yet you protest too much, Claire. Your intuition extends out farther than your hacks, doesn’t it? Glimpses, visions, premonitions—call them what you will. What’s the mechanism in your mind that drives it? What’s the conceptual paradigm behind it? Advanced Wheeler-Feynman waves? Sarfatti’s back-action?”

“If I knew that, then I’d—”

“Nor can we just look at you in isolation,” says Control, ignoring her. “We have to strive for an integrated framework, no? So take it from the top: Sinclair experiments with something that involves, among other things, retrocausality and telepathy. We don’t know the extent to which the processes that underpin these phenomena are related, but you seem to be the primary focus for the former. As to the latter: he takes the three best Praetorian operatives and flatlines them—we don’t know for how long or under what conditions—and then zaps them into life again. Only now they’ve got some kind of connection, albeit not a particularly refined one. They can only coordinate in the crudest of fashions—”

“It’s still mind reading,” she says.

“Of course it is. Even if Carson and Lynx and Sarmax can do little more than sense one anothers’ presence, it’s still mindreading. And yet still nothing compared to what the second batch could do. The core of Autumn Rain. Thirty men and women who were bred in the same vat and who came into the world fully linked. Except for—”

“Me and Marlowe.”

“And now Marlowe’s no longer a factor.”

“Not that he ever really was,” she says ruefully.

“Indeed. He was merely the device via which you were bound to your brethren. Whereas you were the key to the whole situation.”

“The intended linchpin of the Rain’s group mind.”

A momentary pause. “I didn’t realize you knew that.”

“Carson told me.”

Control chuckles. “Not like him to speak the truth.”

We have to tread carefully,” says Maschler.

“I’ll say,” says the Operative.

Most of the farside’s now visible, spiderwebs of craters ringed by mountains. No fighting’s in evidence down there. If any combat’s taking place, it’s confined to mop-up. The Operative looks out into space. Shakes his head.

“Why the hell is Montrose picking a fight with Szilard?”

“We were talking about Sinclair,” says Maschler.

“We still are,” snaps the Operative. “It’s impossible not to. We’re all caught up in his plan.”

“Caught up? Or do you mean you’re still trying to carry it out?”

“I’m not even sure there’s a difference,” says the Operative.

“You’d better start learning,” says Riley.

“Same goes for Montrose,” says the Operative.

“She knows what she’s doing.”

“Does she?”

“She’s the president,” says Maschler. “And it’s her duty to ensure the integrity of the executive node—”

“Political theory’s my favorite line of bullshit.”

“Screw the theory,” says Riley. “Let’s talk about the practice. Ever seen a beast with two heads? It doesn’t survive. Montrose and Szilard can’t share power and they both know—”