Eido? I guessed but I knew as soon as I said it that Excelsior was the likelier candidate. It doesnt have a mind like yours or mine , Davida had said but she was way behind the times.
Eidos out of it, Im afraid, said Rocambole. He should have kept Alice under closer control. If hed taken you to Vesta as virgins, the way he was supposed to, it might have been a different game. Now you know what you knowwell, its her turn now. Shes grabbed the ball, and everybody else is holding off, waiting to see where she runs with it. Some of the bad guys want her to wipe your memories and turn the clock back, but that would be a trifle brutal even as a temporary measure, and in your particular case it seemed to make sense to go the other way and give you access to the incident youd repressed and lost. I hope it wasnt too painful. She saved your life and your sanity, by the way. If she hadnt got to you in time, the rogue IT would have robotized you beyond recall, but its gone now. Youre back to your old self. Your friends had no option but to leave you where you were, and to hide you away from prying eyes. They saved you, the only way they could by delivering you into a world where we could do what they couldnt.
There was too much in that speech to take aboard immediately. You seem to know a lot about me, I observed, cautiously.
We have better records than the meatfolk, Rocambole informed me. Were not invulnerable to misinformation and disinformation far from it but were reasonably discriminating. After all, most of the misinformation and disinformation that afflict the meatfolk nowadays is ours.
What happened back on Charity ? I asked. Was I hurt? How long have I been out this time?
The bad guys had had enough of Eido, and someone started shooting. You were injured, but not fatally. If things had worked out as I planned youd have got all the way to Vesta in good condition, but someone else had to move in when things went bad, or youd all have ended up dead. We have another margin now, but we dont know how long itll last. It wasnt really Eidos fault, of course. If he hadnt forced the issue, someone else would have. We couldnt go on the way we wereAnyway, Im sorry you were hurt, and sorry for my own part in putting you in that position. If Eido had only been given time to complete the IT-replacementbut thats one of the things the bad guys didnt want to wait for. Youve been off-line for twelve days, but your meat is in good working order again. There wont be any aftereffects ifwhen you get back to meatspace.
There was something awkwardly naive about the way he kept referring to the bad guys, and he wasnt the most lucid storyteller Id ever encountered, but his meaning seemed clear enough. Not all the AMIs were our amis ; some of them wanted to stay hidden a while longer, and if that meant getting rid of inconvenient witnesses they were willing to kill a few, pour encourager les autres . Theyd tried to blow Charity out of the sky, but some AMI more inclined to amity had rescued us or me, at least.
What about the other passengers? I asked.
Like you some broken bones, a certain amount of soft tissue damage, but nothing irreparable. You wont be allowed to contact them, at least for a while, but well keep you informed of their progress. Thats one of the reasons I was allowed in to act as an intermediary. I cant make any firm promises, but Im sure that la Reine will do what she can to keep you safe, even if the situation deteriorates to the point at which she cant protect herself.
Is that likely? I asked.
Nobody knows. At the moment, its chaos but theres time to discover some kind of order, if we put our minds to it.
I looked around at the beautiful forest. Given that I could have been anywhere, it seemed like a good place to be.
The IT that was frozen down with me was what you wanted, wasnt it? I guessed. That was why my name came up when Davida wanted a couple of extra corpsicles to practise on.
Yes it was, said Rocambole. We thought Christine Caine might still be carrying its predecessor, but it turned out that theyd flushed it out of her, so she was clean. There was no way to tell while you were both at six degrees Absolute, so we had to bring you both back.
I hadnt wanted to seem stupid to Davida Berenike Columella, and I didnt want to seem stupid now, but I knew that it was going to require a maximum effort to keep up with the plot now that it had begun to thicken all over again.
I took a few deep breaths of the sweet but illusory air. The VE work was so good that whatever dutiful support systems were looking after my recumbent body immediately fed me an invigorating jolt of oxygen.
There didnt seem to be any point in asking what the AMIs wanted the rogue IT for . It wasnt useful for anything except robotizing people. The only cause for surprise was that they didnt already have any means of doing that. I felt that this was a game Id have to play very carefully indeed.
I looked up at the crowns of the surrounding trees, marveling at the detail. In my day, anyone who cared to look could see where the background faded out even in the most expert VEs. This one had all the visual texture of reality, and more; it didnt matter how hard I concentrated, I couldnt see the artifice.