Glasshouse - Charles Stross [103]
It’s frustrating. It’s also immensely worrying because there’s more at risk here than simple personal danger—whether from the experimenters or the other victims. I have a faint inkling of the pain and suffering Curious Yellow caused the first time it got out, and of the terrible struggle it took to chop up the worm’s Chord-type network and sterilize every single assembler. It ruptured what was once an integrated interstellar civilization, smashing it into a mess of diamond-shard polities. How did we stop it . . . ?
Footsteps. It’s Fiore, looking curiously self-satisfied as he heads toward the library doors.
“Finished, Father?” I call.
“Yes, that is all for today.” He inclines his head toward me, a gesture that’s evidently intended to be gracious but that comes over as a pompous bob. Then his eyebrows furrow in a frown. “Ah yes, Reeve. You were involved in the business last night, I believe?”
My left hand tightens on the knife handle inside my bag. “Yes.” I stare him down. “Do you know what Mick was doing to Cass?”
“I know that”—something seems to occur to him, and he changes direction in midsentence—“it is a most serious thing indeed to interfere in the holy relation between husband and wife. But in some circumstances it may be justifiable.” He stares at me owlishly. “She was pregnant, you know.”
“And?”
He must think my expression is one of puzzlement, because he explains, “If you hadn’t intervened, she might have lost the child.” He glances at his watch. “Now, you must excuse me—I have an appointment. Good day.” And he’s off through the door again like a shot, leaving me watching him from behind, mouth agape with disbelief.
Why is Fiore concerned with the health of a fetus, but not about its mother being assaulted, repeatedly raped, held prisoner for weeks, maimed in such a way that she may never walk again? Why? He’s got all the human empathy of a zombie. What’s wrong with him? And why did he suddenly change his tune? I’d swear he was about to denounce what we did last night, but then he moderated his line. Fear of what the Bishop might say if he incited another near riot over the way we rescued Cass, or something else?
They want us to have lots of children. But why is that important to them? Is it something to do with Curious Yellow?
I grind my teeth until Fiore is out of sight, then I hop down from my stool, hang up the CLOSED sign, and head for the lock-up. The secret basement downstairs is as I left it except for the assembler, which is chugging to itself and gurgling as it loads feedstock or coolant or something through pipes in the floor. I guess Fiore’s set it running some kind of long batch job. But checking up on it isn’t why I’m down here right now—I’m here to retrieve the video cartridge from the camcorder I left running on the equipment shelf.
The camcorder is a small metal box with a lens on one side and a screen covering the other. I don’t know what’s going on inside it. It certainly isn’t an original dark ages artifact—I’ve seen pictures of them in the library books—but it does the same job. Along with all the other tech artifacts in this polity, some set designer probably slaved over it for hours trying to figure out how to give it the right functionality without adding too much. They got it wrong, but not too wrong. The original machines used things called “tapes” or “disks,” but this one just writes everything it sees onto a memory diamond the size of a sand grain that’s good for a gigasec of events.
I go sit down on the sofa to play with the ’corder. Putting my bag down next to me, I poke at the display until I’ve zapped back an hour or three. Then I fast-forward through darkness until the light comes on and Fiore comes in. At triple normal speed I watch as he goes over to the bookshelves and leafs through a couple of folders. I pause and zoom in to see what he was reading: POLICY ON SEXCRIME, followed by a glance at FAMILIAL STABILITY INDEX, whatever that is. Next, he trots over to the A-gate and chatters to it, gesturing at the terminal. I don’t see any