Echopraxia by Peter Watts

Author:Peter Watts
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 9781429948067
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

GOD CREATED THE NATURAL NUMBERS. ALL ELSE IS THE WORK OF MAN.

—LEOPOLD KRONECKER

“GOT SOMETHING FOR you.”

It was a white plastic clamshell, about the size and shape to hold a set of antique eyeglasses. Lianna had fabbed a bright green bow and stuck it to the top.

Brüks eyed it suspiciously. “What is it?”

“The Face of God,” she declared, and then—deflated by the look he shot at her, “That’s kind of what the hive’s calling it, anyway. Piece of your slime mold.” She held it out with a flourish. “If Muhammad can’t come to the sample…”

“Thanks.” He took the offering (try as he might, he couldn’t keep from smiling), and set it on the table next to dessert.

“They thought you’d like to take a shot at, you know. Seeing what makes it tick.”

Brüks glanced at a bulkhead window where three Bicamerals floated at the compiler, their gazes divergent as was their wont. (Not any Senguptoid aversion to eye contact, he’d come to realize; just the default preference for a 360-degree visual field, adopted by a collective with eyes to share.) “Are they throwing me a bone, or do they just want someone expendable doing the dissections?”

“A bone, maybe. But you know, this thing does have certain biological properties. And you are the only biologist on board.”

“Roach biologist. And that slime mold’s got to be postbiological if it’s anything at all. And you know as well as I do that I’ve got better odds of getting a blow job from Valerie than—”

He caught himself, too late. Idiot. Stupid, insensitive—

“Maybe not,” Lianna said after a pause so brief it might have been imaginary. “But you’re the only one in the neighborhood with a biologist’s perspective.”

“You—you think that makes a difference?”

“Sure. More to the point, I think they do, too.”

Brüks thought about that. “I’ll try not to let them down, then.” And then: “Lee—”

“So what you doing here, anyway?” She leaned in for a closer look at his display. “You’re running mo-cap.”

He nodded, wary of speech.

“What for? Slimey hasn’t moved since we got here.”

“I’m, uh…” He shrugged and confessed. “I’m watching the Bicams.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“I’ve been trying to figure out their methodology,” he confessed. “Everyone’s got to have one, right? Scientific or superstitious or just some weird gut instinct, there’s at least got to be some kind of pattern…”

“You’re not finding one?”

“Sure I am. They’re rituals. Eulali and Ofoegbu raise their hands just so, Chodorowska howls at the moon for precisely three-point-five seconds, the whole lot of them throw their heads back and gargle, for fucksake. The behaviors are so stereotyped you’d call them neurotic if you saw them in one of those old labs with the real animals in cages. But I can’t correlate them to anything else that happens. You’d think there’d be some kind of sequence, right? Try something, if that doesn’t work try something else. Or just follow some prescribed set of steps to chase away the evil spirits.”

Lianna nodded and said nothing.

“I don’t even know why they bother to make sounds,” he grumbled.

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