For a while, we walked together in silence. I noticed that she had exchanged her suit for a long robe of the kind worn by grand matrons on Patawpha; the robe was wide and billowing, inset with intricate dark blue and gold designs which almost matched the darkening sky. Gladstones hands were out of sight in hidden pockets, the wide sleeves stirred to a breeze; the hem dragged on the milk-white stones of the path.
You let them interrogate me, I said. Im curious as to why.
Gladstones voice was tired. They were not transmitting. There was no danger of the information being passed on.
I smiled. Nonetheless, you let them put me through that.
Security wished to know as much about them as they would divulge.
At the expense of any inconvenience on my part, I said.
Yes.
And does Security know who they were working for?
The man mentioned Harbrit, said the CEO. Security is fairly certain that they meant Emiem Harbrit.
The commodities broker on Asquith?
Yes. She and Diana Philomel have ties with the old Glennon-Height royalist factions.
They were amateurs, I said, thinking of Hermund mentioning Harbrits name, the confused order of Dianas questioning.
Of course.
Are the royalists connected to any serious group?
Only the Shrike church, said Gladstone. She paused where the path crossed a small stream via a stone bridge. The CEO gathered her robe and sat on a wrought-iron bench. None of the bishops have yet come out of hiding, you know.
With the riots and backlash, I dont blame them, I said. I remained standing. There were no bodyguards or monitors in sight, but I knew that if I were to make any threatening move toward Gladstone, I would wake up in ExecSec detention. Above us, the clouds lost their last tinge of gold and began to glow with the reflected silver light of TCs countless tower cities. What did Security do with Diana and her husband? I asked.
Theyve been thoroughly interrogated. Theyre being detained.
I nodded. Thorough interrogation meant that even now their brains were floating in full-shunt tanks. Their bodies would be kept in cryogenic storage until a secret trial determined if their actions had been treasonable. After the trial, the bodies would be destroyed, and Diana and Hermund would remain in detention, with all sensory and comm channels turned off. The Hegemony had not used the death for centuries, but the alternatives were not pleasant. I sat on the long bench, six feet from Gladstone.
Do you still write poetry?
I was surprised by her question. I glanced down the garden path where floating Japanese lanterns and hidden glow-globes had just come on. Not really, I said. Sometimes I dream in verse. Or used to
Meina Gladstone folded her hands on her lap and studied them. If you were writing about the events unfolding now, she said, what kind of poem would you create?
I laughed. Ive already begun it and abandoned it twice or rather, he had. It was about the death of the gods and their difficulty in accepting their displacement. It was about transformation and suffering and injustice. And it was about the poet whom he thought suffered most at such injustice.
Gladstone looked at me. Her face was a mass of lines and shadows in the dimming light. And who are the gods that are being replaced this time, M. Severn? Is it humanity or the false gods we created to depose us?
How the hell should I know? I snapped and turned away to watch the stream.
You are part of both worlds, no? Humanity and TechnoCore?
I laughed again. Im part of neither world. A cybrid monster here, a research project there.
Yes, but whose
research? And for what ends?
I shrugged.
Gladstone rose and I followed. We crossed the stream and listened to water moving over the stones. The path wound between tall boulders covered with exquisite lichen which glowed in the lantern light.
Gladstone paused at the top of a short flight of stone steps. Do you think the Ultimates in the Core will succeed in constructing their Ultimate Intelligence, M. Severn?
Will they build God? I said. There are those AIs which do not want to build God. They learned from the human experience that to construct the next step in awareness is an invitation to slavery, if not actual extinction.
But would a true God extinguish his creatures?
In the case of the Core and the hypothetical UI, I said, God is the creature, not the creator. Perhaps a god must create the lesser beings in contact with it in order for it to feel any responsibility for them.
Yet the Core has appeared to take responsibility for human beings in the centuries since the AI Secession, said Gladstone. She was gazing intently at me, as if gauging something by my expression.
I looked out at the garden. The path glowed whitely, almost eerily in the dark. The Core works toward its own ends, I said, knowing as I spoke that no human being knew that fact better than CEO Meina Gladstone.
And do you feel that humanity no longer figures as a means toward those ends?
I made a dismissive gesture with my right hand. Im a creature of neither culture, I said again. Neither graced by the naivete of the unintentional creators, nor cursed by the terrible awareness of their creatures.