by Peter Watts
“Do you remember what for?”
“Some kind of disease?”
“Some kind.”
“And you … you think the corpses did…”
“I don’t know.”
“… leg hurts…”
“Sorry…”
And his brainstem rises up and snatches him away again. She grapples and holds on until it lets go. Until he fights his way back from wherever he goes at times like this.
“… still here, I see…”
“Still here,” Clarke repeats.
“God, Len. Please don’t do this.”
“I’m sorry,” she tells him. “I’m sorry…”
“I’m not worth shit to you,” Bhanderi grates. “I can’t remember anything…”
“It’ll come back.” It has to.
“You don’t know. You don’t know any … thing about us.”
“I know a little.”
“No.”
“I knew someone. Like you. He came back.” Which is almost a lie.
“Let me go. Please.”
“After. I promise.”
She rationalizes in transit, not convincing herself for an instant. She’s helping him as well as herself, she’s doing him a favor. She’s saving him from the ultimate lethality of his own lifestyle. Hyperosmosis; Slimy Implant Syndrome; mechanical breakdown. Rifters are miracles of bioengineering—thanks to the superlative design of their diveskins, they can even shit in the woods—but they were never designed to unseal outside of an atmosphere. Natives unmask all the time out here, let raw ocean into their mouths to corrupt and corrode and contaminate the brackish internal saline that braces them against the pressure. Do that often enough and something’s bound to seize up eventually.
I’m saving your life, she thinks, unwilling to say the words aloud.
Whether he likes it or not, Alyx replies from the back of her mind.
“The light…” Bhanderi croaks.
Glimmers smear the darkness ahead, disfiguring the perfect void like faint glowing sores. Bhanderi stiffens at Clarke’s side, but doesn’t bolt. She knows he can handle it; it can’t have been more than a couple of weeks since she found him inside the nerve hab, and he had to pass through brighter skies than these to get there. Surely he can’t have slipped so far in such a short time?
Or is it something else, not so much a slip as a sudden jolt? Maybe it’s not the light that bothers him at all. Maybe it’s what the light reminds him of, now.
Boom. Blew it up.
Spectral fingers tap lightly against Clarke’s implants: once, twice. Someone ahead, taking a sonar bearing. She takes Bhanderi’s arm, holds it gently but firmly. “Rama, someone’s—”
“Charley,” Bhanderi buzzes.
Garcia rises ahead of them, ambient backlight framing him like a visitation. “Holy shit. You got him. Rama, you in there?”
“Client…”
“He remembers me! Fuck it’s good to see you, man. I thought you’d pretty much shuffled off the mortal coil.”
“Tried. She won’t let me.”
“Yeah, we’re all sorry about that but we really need your help. Don’t sweat it, though, buddy. We’ll make it work.” Garcia turns to Clarke. “What do we need?”
“Medhab ready?”
“Sealed off one sphere. Left the other in case someone breaks an arm.”
“Okay. We’ll need the lights off, to start with anyway. Even the externals.”
“No problem.”
“… Charley…” Bhanderi clicks.
“Right here, man.”
“… you my techie…?”
“Dunno. Could be, I guess. Sure. You need one?”
Bhanderi’s masked face turns to Clarke. Suddenly there’s something different in the way he holds himself. “Let me go.”
This time, she does.
“How long since I was inside?” he asks.
“I think maybe two weeks. Three at the outside.” By rifter standards, the estimate is almost surgically precise.
“I may have … problems,” he tells them. “Readjusting. I don’t know if I can—I don’t know how much I can get back.”
“We understand,” Clarke buzzes. “Just—”
“Shut up. Listen.” Bhanderi’s head darts from side to side, a disquieting reptilian gesture that Clarke has seen before. “I’ll need to … to kickstart. I’ll need help. Acetylcholine. Uh, tyrosine hydroxylase. Picrotoxin. If I fall apart … if I fall apart in there you’ll need to get those into me. Understand?”
She runs them back. “Acetylcholine. Picrotoxin. Tyro, uh—”
“Tyrosine hydroxylase. Remember.”
“What dose?” Garcia wonders. “What delivery?”
“I don’t—shit. Can’t remember. Check MedBase. Maxi-mum recommended dosage for … for everything except the hydroxy … lase. Double for that, maybe. I think.”
Garcia nods. “Anything else?”
“Hell yes,” Bhanderi buzzes. “Just wish I could remember what…”
PORTRAIT OF THE SADIST AS A TEAM PLAYER
ALICE Jovellanos’s definition of apology was a little unconventional.
Achilles, she had begun, you can be such a raging idiot sometimes I just don’t believe it.
He’d never made a hard copy. He hadn’t needed to. He was a ’lawbreaker, occipital cortex stuck in permanent overdrive, pattern-matching and correlative skills verging on the autistic. He had scrolled her letter once down his inlays, watched it vanish, and reread it a hundred times since, every pixel crisp and immutable in perfect recollection.
Now he sat still as stone, waiting for her. Sudbury’s ever-dimming nightscape splashed haphazard patches of light across the walls of his apartment. There were too many lines-of-sight to nearby buildings, he noted. He would have to blank the windows before she arrived.
You know what I was risking coming clean with you yesterday, Alice had dictated. You know what I’m risking sending this to you now—it’ll autowipe, but there’s nothing these assholes can’t scan if they feel like it. That’s part of the problem, that’s why I’m taking this huge risk in the first place …
I heard what you said about trust and betrayal, and maybe some of it rings a bit more true than I’d like. But don’t you see there was no point in asking you beforehand? As long as Guilt Trip was running the show, you were incapable of making your own decision. You keep insisting that’s wrong, you go on about all the life-and-death decisions you make and the thousands of variables you juggle but Achilles my dear, whoever told you that free will was just some complicated algorithm for you to follow?
I know you don’t want to be corrupted. But maybe a decent, honest human being is his own safeguard, did you ever think of that? Maybe you don’t have to let them turn you into one big conditioned reflex. Maybe you just want them to, because then it’s not really your responsibility, is it? It’s so easy to never have to make your own decisions. Addictive, even. Maybe you even got hooked on it, and you’re going through a little bit of withdrawal now.
She’d had such faith in him. She still did; she was on her way here right now, not suspecting a thing. Surveillance-free accommodation wasn’t cheap, but any senior ’lawbreaker could afford the Privacy Plus brand name and then some. The security in his building was airtight, ruthless, and utterly devoid of long-term memory. Once a visitor cleared, there would be no record of their comings and goings.
Anyhow, what they stole, we gave back. And I’m going to tell you exactly how we did that, on the premise, you know, ignorance breeds fear and all that. You know about the Minsky receptors in your frontal lobes, and how all those nasty little guilt transmitters bind to them, and how you perceive that as conscience. They made Guilt Trip by tweaking a bunch of behavior-modification genes snipped from parasites; the guiltier you feel, the more Trip gets pumped into your brain. It binds to the transmitters, which changes their shape and basically clogs your motor pathways so you can’t move.
Anyway, Spartacus is basically
a guilt analog. It’s got the same active sites, so it binds to the Trip, but the overall conformation is slightly different so it doesn’t actually do anything except clog up the Minsky receptors. Also it takes longer to break down than regular guilt, so it reaches higher concentrations in the brain. Eventually it overwhelms the active sites through sheer numbers.
He remembered splinters from an antique hardwood floor, tearing his face. He remembered lying in the dark, the chair he was tied to toppled on its side, while Ken Lubin’s voice wondered from somewhere nearby: “What about side effects? Baseline guilt, for example?”
And in that instant, bound and bleeding, Achilles Desjardins had seen his destiny.
Spartacus wasn’t content to simply unlock the chains that the Trip had forged. If it had been, there might have been hope. He would have had to fall back on good old-fashioned shame to control his inclinations, certainly. He would have stayed depraved at heart, as he’d always been. But Achilles Desjardins had never been one to let his heart out unsupervised anyway. He could have coped, even out of a job, even up on charges. He could have coped.
But Spartacus didn’t know when to quit. Conscience was a molecule like any other—and with no free receptor sites to bind onto, it might as well be neutral saline for all the effect it had. Desjardins was headed for a whole new destination, a place he’d never been before. A place without guilt or shame or remorse, a place without conscience in any form.
Alice hadn’t mentioned any of that when she’d spilled her pixelated heart across his in-box. She’d only assured him how safe it all was. That’s the real beauty of it, Killjoy; both your natural transmitters and the Trip itself are still being produced normally, so a test that keys on either of ’em comes up clean. Even a test looking for the complexed form will pass muster, since the baseline complex is still floating around—it just can’t find any free receptor sites to latch onto. So you’re safe. Honestly. The bloodhounds won’t be a problem.
Safe. She’d had no idea what kind of thing looked out from behind his eyes. She should have known better. Even children know the simple truth: monsters live everywhere, even inside. Especially inside.
I wouldn’t put you at risk, Achilles, believe me. You mean too—you’re too much of a friend for me to fuck around like that.
She loved him, of course. He had never really admitted it before—some pipsqueak inner voice might have whispered I think she kind of, maybe before three decades of self-loathing squashed it flat: What a fucking egotist. As if anyone would want anything to do with an enculé like you …
She’d never explicitly propositioned him—in her own way she was as insecure as he was, for all her bluster—but the signs were there in hindsight: her good-natured interference every time a woman appeared in his life, her endless social overtures, the nickname Killjoy—ostensibly because of his reticence to go out, but more likely because of his reticence to put out. It was all so obvious now. Freed from guilt, freed from shame, his vision had sharpened to crystal perfection.
Anyway, there you go. I’ve stuck my neck out for you, and what happens now is pretty much up to you. If you turn me in, though, know this: you’re the one making that decision. However you rationalize it, you won’t be able to blame some stupid long-chain molecule. It’ll be you all the way, your own free will.
He hadn’t turned her in. It must have been some fortuitous balance of conflicting molecules: those that would have compelled betrayal weakening in his head, those that spoke to loyalty among friends not yet snuffed out. In hindsight, it had been a very lucky break.
So use it, and think about all the things you’ve done and why, and ask yourself if you’re really so morally rudderless that you couldn’t have made all those tough decisions without enslaving yourself to a bunch of despots. I think you could have, Achilles. You never needed their ball and chain to be a decent human being. I really believe that. I’m gambling everything on it.
He checked his watch.
You know where I am. You know what your options are. Join me or stab me. Your choice.
He stood, and crossed to the windows. He blanked the panes.
Love, Alice.
The doorbell chimed.
* * *
Every part of her was vulnerable. She looked up at him, her face hopeful, her almond eyes cautious. One corner of her mouth pulled back in a tentative, slightly rueful grin.
Desjardins stood aside, took a deep, quiet breath as she passed. Her scent was innocent and floral, but there were molecules in that mix working below the threshold of conscious awareness. She wasn’t stupid; she knew he wasn’t either. She must realize he’d peg his incipient arousal on pheromones she hadn’t worn in his presence for years.
Her hopes must be up.
He’d done his best to raise them, without being too obvious. He’d affected a gradual thawing in his demeanor over the previous few days, a growing, almost reluctant warmth. He’d stood at her side as Clarke and Lubin disappeared into traffic, en route to their own private revolution; Desjardins had let his arm bump against Alice’s, and linger. After a few moments of that casual contact she’d looked up at him, a bit hesitantly, and he’d rewarded her with a shrug and a smile.
She’d always had his friendship, until she’d betrayed him. She’d always longed for more. It was an incapacitating mix. Desjardins had been able to disarm her with the merest chance of reconciliation.
Now she brushed past, closer than strictly necessary, her ponytail swishing gently against her nape. Mandelbrot appeared in the hall and slithered around her ankles like a furry boa. Alice reached down to scritch the cat’s ears. Mandelbrot hesitated, perhaps wondering whether to play hard to get, then evidently figured fuck it and let out a purr.
Desjardins directed Alice to the bowl of goofballs on the coffee table. Alice pursed her lips. “These are safe?” Some of the chemicals that senior ’lawbreakers kept in their systems could provoke nasty interactions with the most innocuous recreationals, and Jovellanos had only just gotten her shots.
“I doubt they’re any worse than the ways you’ve already fucked with the palette,” Desjardins said.
Her face fell. A twinge of remorse flickered in Desjardins’s throat. He swallowed, absurdly grateful for the feeling. “Just don’t mix them with axotropes,” he added, more gently.
“Thanks.” She took the olive branch with the drug, popped a cherry-red marble into her mouth. Desjardins could see her bracing herself.
“I was afraid you were never going to talk to me again,” she said softly.
If her hair had been any finer it would be synthetic.
“It would have served you right.” He let the words hang between them. He imagined knotting that jet-black ponytail around his fist. He imagined suspending her by it, letting her feet kick just off the floor …
No. Stop it.
“But I think I understand why you did it,” he said at last, letting her off the hook.
“Really?”
“I think so. You had a lot of nerve.” He took a breath. “But you had a lot of faith in me, too. You wouldn’t have done it otherwise. I guess that counts for something.”
It was as though she’d been holding her breath since she arrived, and only let it out now that her sentence had been read aloud: Conditional discharge. She bought it, Desjardins thought. She thinks there’s hope—
—while another part of him, diminished but defiant, insisted, Why does she have to be wrong?
He brushed her cheek with his palm, could just barely hear the soft, quick intake of breath his touch provoked. He blinked against the fleeting image of a backhanded blow across that sweet, unsuspecting face. “You have a lot more faith in me than I do, Alice. I don’t know how warranted it is.”
“They stole your freedom to choose. I only gave it back to you.”
“You stole my conscience. How am I supposed to choose?”
“With your mind, Killjoy. With that brilliant, beautiful mind. Not some gut-instinct emotion that’s done
more harm than good for the past couple million years.”
He sank onto the sofa, a small, sudden pit opening in his stomach. “I’d hoped it was a side effect,” he said softly.
She sat beside him. “What do you mean?”
“You know.” Desjardins shook his head. “People never think things through. I kind of hoped you and your buddies just—hadn’t worked out the ramifications, you know? You were just trying to subvert the Trip, and the whole conscience thing was a—a misstep. Unforeseen. But I guess not.”
She put her hand on his knee. “Why would you hope that?”
“I’m not really sure.” He barked a soft laugh. “I guess I thought, if you didn’t know you were—I mean, if you do something by accident that’s one thing, but if you deliberately set out to make a bunch of psychopaths—”
“We’re not making psychopaths, Achilles. We’re freeing people from conscience.”
“What’s the difference?”
“You can still feel. Your amygdala still works. Your dopamine and serotonin levels are normal. You’re capable of long-term planning, you’re not a slave to your impulses. Spartacus doesn’t change any of that.”
“Is that what you think.”
“You really think all the assholes in the world are clinical?”
“Maybe not. But I bet all the clinicals in the world are assholes.”
“You’re not,” she said.
She stared at him with serious, dark eyes. He couldn’t stop smelling her. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to hug her. He wanted to gut her like a fish and put her head on a stick.
He gritted his teeth and kept silent.
“Ever hear of the trolley paradox?” Alice said after a moment.
Desjardins shook his head.
“Six people on a runaway train, headed off a cliff. The only way to save them is switch the train to another track. Except there’s someone else standing on that track, and he won’t be able to get out of the way before the train squashes him. Do you reroute?”
“Of course.” It was the greater good at its most simplistic.
“Now say you can’t reroute the train, but you can stop it by pushing someone into its path. Do you?”
