Echo of Worlds (Pandominion, #2)

by M.R. Carey

The problem with any really advanced intelligence, it seemed, was that just by existing it tended to erode the autonomy of all the selves around it.

There are science teams in the Cielo redoubts who are still studying the stuff, but they decided to leave the Mother Mass well alone after that. Just for once the Council and the Cielo agreed they’d bitten off more than they could comfortably swallow.”

“Trying to back out,” he said, with something that sounded like disapproval. Or maybe reproach. “The fuck,” Moon said, her anger flaring again at the sight of him, not to mention that judgemental tone. “I never backed in, you moron.

“When we discussed it on your first day here we spoke only in broad terms.” “Broad enough to seem actively evasive,” Dulcie agreed. “Don’t think we didn’t notice.”

It was probably just as well that the tear gas was filling up the room. Moon could still see, but beyond a few feet out she had to rely on thermals and infrared. The visible spectrum was mostly fucked.

Only none of them seemed to want to get too close to Paz. That puzzled Essien mightily, until he remembered that however imposing he might be he was still just a man in armour. She was the one who truly looked alien – and on top of that here she was sticking her neck out for them after they’d been a few hot seconds away from murdering her. Obviously that left some residual awkwardness.

It’s only that… well…” Hadiz trailed off, either tactfully or strategically depending on how you saw it. “That in the Pando you’re an abomination,” Paz finished. “A sampled consciousness without a tether.” “Exactly. Vemmet practically makes the sign of the cross every time I speak to him.” “The sign of the what?” “Sorry. Culturally specific reference. It’s a gesture that wards off evil. Allegedly.”

The cost to her was not small. Subjectively the time she spent with me was longer than her entire life had been up to that point. What reserves she found to draw on I will never know, but I do know this: the coin she spent was herself.

I knew the warning was useless. They would learn the hard way because the hard way was the way they knew.

I speak with them often. For a given value of the term, I think et and Professor Tambuwal are happy there. For a given value of the term, they are together.

More surprisingly, Orso Vemmet read to them from books they had requested to be brought from Hadiz Tambuwal’s world, highly coloured novels and short fictions by their favourite author, the deceased anthropoid self named Charles Dickens.