Rulaine sighed. “Gaspard is a pragmatist. And he probably has a better sense than we do about how much time we have to get our house in order before the wolf comes sniffing around the door again.”
“Yeah, well, it took centuries to make this mess. Only seems fair that it would take centuries to unmake it.”
Bannor nodded. “I get that. But what if we don’t have centuries?”
“Look, I’m not saying I’ve got the answers. But the five blocs are going about this all wrong, and they’re not losing a lot of sleep over it, either. The only thing they’ve all been able to agree on is that they should take the unproductive nations out behind the shed and whup them. Yeah, just like old times.”
“So, you hate the nation-states. Surprised you’re not working for the megacorporations.”
“Them?” Bannor thought Dora might have expectorated along with her utterance of that word. “Look: nations screw up like people do; sometimes they mean well, sometimes they’re selfish or delusional bitches on a spree, and sometimes they just plain make mistakes. But the megacorporations don’t make mistakes; if they do damage, it’s because they like the cost-to-benefit ratios, dead innocents notwithstanding. Nations are bulls in the global china shop; corporations are sharks.”
“Yeah, but what about the—?”
Veriden rose. “Rulaine, I didn’t come here to debate politics, the world, and everything. I came to make a report, explain why I didn’t let anyone know I was IRIS, and try to get along. But as you’ve pointed out, I don’t do that very well.” She looked over her shoulder at Caine. “I hope he pulls through. But there doesn’t seem much chance of it now.” She turned and padded away, dwindling down the long hallway that was shaped by walls which swept up into high and impenetrable shadows.
Chapter Fifty-Two. THE THIRD SILVER TOWER BD +02 4076 TWO (“DISPARITY”)
Mriif’vaal approached the Rapport Sphere and thought: Twice in the same week; this is unprecedented in the annals of Disparity. Woe that I should live in such times.
He touched the outer layer of the sphere. The transparent membrane began allowing his tendrils to move through it. Moving very slowly, his whole body passed to the other side of the barrier much as oxygen passed through it by osmosis.
Between the osmotic Outer Sphere, and the hard, hermetic Inner Sphere, the air was thick: an overpressure environment that ensured that none of the spores and pheromones within the Inner Sphere would escape when the seam into it was opened. Mriif’vaal sighed, stared at the swirling vapors on the other side of the hard, clear surface. Those many airborne transmitters and receptors of meaning were not to be braved by the unprepared. The unrestricted sensory wave that perfused both the body and mind of any Slaasriithi that entered was powerful, paralyzing to the untrained.
Mriif’vaal did not welcome his imminent contact with the OverWatchling’s mind. He did not know any ratiocinator that did. And none of the other taxae had contact with it at all. Indeed, it was probably wrong to even think of the OverWatchling as having a mind. It was more akin to a highly detailed awareness. It deduced, but hardly reasoned; it learned, but was rarely capable of generalizing lessons learned within one domain of knowledge to any other; and while it was capable of change, it was disposed to resist it, in the interest of maintaining the stability of the polytaxic order and the synergies of macroevolution.
But this was not what made the consciousness of the OverWatchling such a ubiquitous source of discomfort among ratiocinatorae; it was the unsettling impression that its awareness could have been a mind, but had not been allowed to become one. This invariably led any perspicacious ratiocinator to wonder what dark path of inducement had produced this biomechanical hybrid, this being that was not a being. It did not help matters that the source of the OverWatchlings was not shared with the whole of the Slaasriithi polytaxon, not even with all Senior Ratiocinatorae. It was only known to those Prime Ratiocinatorae whose domains of responsibility transcended the boundaries of an individual world and extended into the interconnections between planets, star systems, and species. It was they who delivered new OverWatchlings to planets that had been sufficiently bioformed to warrant one. They did not divulge where the OverWatchlings originated, or how their biological and mechanical parts were, ultimately, fused. None of which helped diminish the disquiet that other ratiocinatorae felt when in contact with the awareness of these pseudosophonts. Mriif’vaal splayed his tendrils wide across the Inner Sphere. A seam opened where none had been evident; he entered the pungent miasma.
Moments after he had seated himself, Mriif’vaal smelled a change in the pheromones; Disparity’s newly reactivated satellite grid had linked this chamber of the Third Silver Tower to that one which housed the OverWatchling beneath the First Silver Tower. The room’s audio converter and playback systems activated, but they were rarely significant in communicating with the OverWatchling. Having no mouth, no real body, it could communicate quantitatively through data streams or, when qualitative comparisons or discussions were required, through remote manipulation of the organic emissions within the Inner Chamber. Given the nature of this particular contact, the latter would predominate, or possibly be the sole vector of exchange.
“I am aware of your situation, Senior Ratiocinator Mriif’vaal,” was the verbal equivalent of what the OverWatchling conveyed, albeit over the period of half a minute: it took considerable time for the Inner Sphere’s changed spores to perfuse Mriif’vaal’s receptors, then stimulate electrochemical changes the same way that sights and sounds produced meaning in one’s brain. And in referring to “this situation,” the OverWatchling transmitted meaning that went far beyond that simple word, but invoked a signification-matrix that encompassed all the relevant reports, data, lists, and analyses that were resident in its awareness. Resident, but mostly inert, since its prior experience had not prepared it for such a complicated and nuanced situation as the one it now faced.
“I requested this communing to alert you to the significance of the impending demise of the human named Caine Riordan.”
“Your reason for contact is included in my awareness of the situation. But I do not perceive why a single being’s impending demise warrants this concern.”
“You are aware of the role of the human, of the tacit assurances we provided him and his group for their safety on Disparity, and of his possible further significance to Yiithrii’ah’aash’s mission?”
“The ratiocinatorae have relayed these data points, but I do not understand the implicit connection between a single being and these greater significances.”
Mriif’vaal breathed deeply: it had already been five minutes, and the OverWatchling’s inability to perceive the social and cultural ramifications of the matter promised that it would take much, much longer. “I shall explain. Firstly, you may recall that we counseled you regarding the importance of individual human lives when they first crashed upon this world.”
“I am aware of the content of our prior contact.”
Aware of it in the sense of being an immense but uncomprehending recording device. “What we were not aware of at that time was that this particular being, Caine Riordan, was already Affined to us by an old mark — an unthinkably old mark. We are uncertain of the origin of this mark, but believe it may be connected to the profound sense of importance and urgency that Yiithrii’ah’aash imparted to us about this mission.”