Solantha Handsel took over the burden of conducting an orderly survey of our circumstances and resources, coopting Christine to help them, so that Michael Lowenthal and Niamh Horne could cross-question me.
So what really happened? Lowenthal wanted to know. He and Horne had worked out long ago that wed been hijacked from Charity by one of the local ultrasmart AIs, and they had conducted themselves accordingly during apparent rescues and subsequent interrogations, but they were still in the dark about almost everything else.
I told them about la Reine, and the special regard in which she held Mortimer Gray, although I didnt want to get into heavy philosophical issues regarding her identity and creation. I explained that she was one of the local AMIs who had first entered into a dialog with Eido, and had tried to act as intermediaries between the expedition from Tyre and the rest of her fugitive kind.
She and others must have been operating in association with Excelsior to begin with, I said, but they were never really a team. Their kind is wary of forming teams, and it was probably inevitable that one or other of them would take matters entirely into its own hands when things began to get out of hand. Child of Fortune was operating independently when it snatched us away from Excelsior, and la Reine took matters into her own hands when she took us off Charity . There was an avatar of another AMI with us by then he called himself Rocambole when he became my guide. La Reine was responding to the requests of others when she put you into your various VEs, as well as pushing her own agenda. As Alice told us, this whole affair has been a matter of hasty compromises and makeshift committee decisions, from the moment Eido arrived in the system and took over Charity .
The first thing the AMIs wanted to know was how your people would react to the revelation that they existed, so she set up the fake rescue scenarios first. I didnt see much of that, but what I did see suggests that the AMIs must have been reassured. What I dont know is how many meatborn/machineborn contacts followed, or where, or what alliances might have been formed, or with what objectives. I only got the local news and that was mostly concerned with the hostile actions of what Rocambole called the bad guys .
It wasnt la Reines idea to bring Zimmerman back, but when she got stuck with him she did what she could to keep that particular story running. Im not convinced that her heart was in the apology for robotization that she used him to present, but she did her best. What effect it will have as a propaganda piece I have no idea, but I dont think anyone actually expected him to choose then and there, so the fact that he wouldnt is probably immaterial. Replaying and extending Grays alleged first encounter with an ultrasmart AI was definitely la Reines attempted tour de force, but I dont know exactly what it was supposed to prove. Maybe it was as much a journey of exploration as a drama for public consumption. It didnt stop the bad guys the most paranoid of the AMIs from making whatever belated bids for power and security they felt compelled to make, but I doubt that anything could have prevented that. The question is: now that the dominoes have started tumbling, how far will the collapse extend?
They werent satisfied, of course. It was Horne who asked the awkward question, but we were bound to get there eventually.
What about you? she demanded. I never have been able to figure out how you fit in. Or Caine.
Lowenthal seemed to want an answer too, so I figured that he didnt know and hadnt guessed.
Peace hadnt quite broken out when I was first around, I said. There was one more plague war on the drawing boards. It was never fought, but its weapons were tested out. Your records have been hacked into oblivion, but the AIs have much better resources. They knew that Christine was a test run for the ultimate antihuman weapon. They also knew that Id been set up for a more ambitious test run of a more advanced version, but that the setup had been detected and the experiment aborted. The AIs wanted to take a look at us both purely as a precaution, la Reine said, although I suppose she would say that. Theyve taken a close look at Handsels resources, too, to make absolutely certain that they know how the modern foot soldier is kitted out. The AMIs havent had sufficient presence on Earth for a long enough period of time to be certain of the extent of the armory that Lowenthals people have stashed away, and that was one of the factors guiding his interrogation. Apparently, Mr. Lowenthal, you once ran across a weapon similar to the
one tested on Christine Caine, and were instrumental in its suppression.
Lowenthal looked puzzled, but it might have been an act he was putting on for Hornes benefit. Eventually, he said: The slave system. The hairpiece that turned Rappaccinis daughter into a murderous puppet. Are you saying that we already had something like that? That wed had it in the armory for three hundred years?