Orbiter -- enough food stores for years. We control their currents and
weather. We have Flattery's precious Organic Mental Core -- shit, we can hook
it up to the ship ourselves and fly out of here . . ."
She didn't hear the rest. Her mind focused on what he'd said at the
beginning: "enough food stores for years."
If he kills everyone aboard the Orbiter.
" . . . He'll have to throw it in," the captain was saying. "The rabble will
have at him down there, and he doesn't dare destroy everything that he's
worked for up here. Whoever beats him on the ground then can deal with me."
He's really going to do this, she thought. He's going to kill everyone
aboard.
He took her hand and she snapped it back with a revulsion that she couldn't
hide.
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"Us," he said. "I meant they can deal with us. You and me. They'll believe
whatever you tell them, at least for a while." He leaned closer, whispered,
"You don't want to make another mistake, get more people killed."
She propelled herself out of her couch, not caring where the thrust might
throw her in the gravity-
free cabin. No one pursued her. The first handhold she grabbed stopped her
beside a pair of security, younger than the young captain, who were reviewing
the basics of holo camera triangulation.
They really intend to go on the air, she thought.
She looked back at the captain. He had his back to her, briefing several men.
The tone of his voice, briskness of his gestures told her that he meant
business. It was true, he could do it without her. It was true, that by
helping him she might save others. She could not bring herself to speak to
him, to go to him in any way. She sighed, and interrupted her two new
cameramen.
"No," she said, "with that setup the alpha set only gets fifteen degrees of
pan. OK if you're covering a launch, but we'll be inside, in a small space .
. ."
As she instructed the two young amateurs she saw Brood watching her. He
winked at her once, and she successfully suppressed the shudder that tempted
her spine.
"They'll want to see this Organic Mental Core in transport, and they'll want
to know something about its -- her -- background. Let's start by getting some
of that in the can."
She passed the two-hour flight instructing her camera operators, two men and a
woman, none of whom she recognized from the massacre at the SLS studio.
Beatriz preferred their company, even if they did answer to the captain.
Whether by accident or design, she did not encounter any of that squad during
their flight.
The Organic Mental Core was a living brain, enclosed in an intricate
plasma-glass container that made allowances for the hookups to come. A
complex plug would connect the brain with the control system aboard the
Voidship. What she didn't expect horrified her the most.
They're supported by . . . bodies!
She had done a report on such a thing several years ago. Scientists had
connected a brain from a crushed body to a healthy body that had suffered a
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massive head injury. Each kept the other alive, though there had been no way
to communicate with the healthy brain. At that time it was simply trapped in
there, cut off from all sensation, alive and dreaming. She took a deep breath
and let the reporter in her take over.
The medtech in charge had a number of active facial tics and each of her
questions seemed to accelerate them. She learned nothing about the principle
that she hadn't already learned through research or through Dwarf MacIntosh.
". . . As you well know, it was because of a failure in the OMCs that we wound
up on Pandora."
"I understand that the OMCs were traditionally taken from infants with fatal
birth defects. This
OMC is from an adult human. How will the performance differ?"
"Twofold," the tech replied. "First, this person was dying at the time of
conversion, therefore it -- she -- should be thankful for an extension of her
life in a useful, indeed noble, role.
Second, this person survived the longest hybernation known to humankind and
woke to life on
Pandora. She knows that if humans are to survive, it must be elsewhere. She
can take comfort in being the instrument of that survival."
"Does she know any of this?"
The tech looked perplexed. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]