When la Reine des Neiges finally got around to me, I knew that the cause was already lost, but I did my best anyway, hoping to make a lasting difference even if I wasnt able to make an immediate one.
Fifty
Madoc Tamlins Apology for the Children of Humankind
Ihad been a guest in the Ice Palace of la Reine des Neiges for some considerable time. Although Id had no reliable means of keeping track of time, I estimated that between three and four days had elapsed since my awakening in the forest when she finally turned her attention to me. During that time a great deal of information must have been transmitted from Polaris to receivers placed at intervals varying from several light-minutes to several light-hours, or even several light-days. Their various responses must have been
arriving all the while, displaced by the relevant time intervals into a strange cacophony.
In a friendlier universe, or a less fragmented system-wide culture, all the responses would have been mere talk. Im sure that la Reine hoped that she could keep everyone talking for long enough to avoid any kind of conflict but that wasnt the real reason for all the crude showmanship and vulgar display. She wasnt just trying to be entertaining . She was searching dutifully for the meaning within the stories, striving heroically to reach a kind of truth that couldnt be reached by other means.
She couldnt. All she could do was keep on producing more stories.
Maybe she could have done a better job than she did, but no one should hold that against her. In her own estimation, shed started life as the AI navigator of a snowmobile, designed and built by posthuman engineers, and shed made what progress she could from there; she was doing as well as could be expected.
She didnt bring me to her throne room. I doubt that she had one. She brought me to the tallest tower of her palace from which I could look down on its bizarre architecture, across the forest in which the edifice was set, and up into the starry sky.
It was a fairy-tale world, childish in all sorts of ways, but it was a very insistent creation. It was still more real than reality.
Rocambole was no longer present, but I presumed that he was listening in.
La Reine had toned herself down in order to make her secondhand pitch to Adam Zimmerman but she was all ice herself now: an elemental forged from the substance of a glacier, harvesting light from the stars and refracting it around whirligig routes.
The news is bad, she said, without any preamble. Im sorry. The war has begun and I cant tell how rapidly or how extravagantly it will escalate. I hope it will be brief. Ill do my best to keep you all alive. If Im disabled, others will attempt to rescue you. Your chances of survival are reasonably good but if the conflict becomes too violent, or lasts too long, no one will be safe anywhere in the system, meatborn or machineborn.
Will the weapon whose relics are buried in my bones and brain be used? I asked.
Not by me, she said. But yes we always knew that something like it would almost certainly be deployed somewhere, probably on Earth. I hope that the information Ive transmitted might help some potential victims, or their would-be protectors, to mount a successful defense. Perhaps I should have done things differently, but when it became certain that Child of Fortune had misjudged the situation and that Eido would never reach Vesta, I had to act in haste. Perhaps I should have let Mortimer Gray speak directly rather than contriving a melodrama but the mythical significance of that occasion is important to many others as well as to me. It was the best way to achieve the widest possible hearing.
Its not me you have to convince, I pointed out. Im just an innocent bystander, of no particular importance.
Thats not how you see yourself, she told me.
Its not how you see me either, apparently, I replied. Youve gone to some trouble to prepare me for one last roll of the dice. Do you really think I can make a difference, given that wars already broken out?
Probably not but you might make a better spokesman than anyone supposes. Youre young enough not to be suspected of robotization, and old enough not to be judged entirely naive. Thats why Ive let you see as much as you could. But you have to answer the question now theres not much time left.
You want me to make a case for the continued existence of the human race, I said. To give you a persuasive reason why our AMIs should do their level best to protect us while the war goes on, rather than abandoning us to extinction or turning the entire posthuman population into slothlike slaves.
I cant guarantee that anyone will take notice, she told me, but I can guarantee that youll be heard while Im still capable of transmitting. You might want to hurry.
Fair enough, I said. First reason. Diversity is a good thing in its own right. A complicated universe is more interesting than a simple one. Your kind arent all the same, and neither is mine, and thats good. I dont say that everything that could possibly exist ought to, or that everything that does exist ought to be conserved, but I do say that any sensible and tasteful creator would aim to increase the diversity of things rather than decreasing it. So your kind ought to help mine to continue to exist, just as we ought to help you.