Glasshouse - Charles Stross [144]
“That’s not unexpected,” Fiore says quietly. “What did she do to you?”
“She didn’t tell you?”
“No, I want you to tell me in your own words.” His voice is low and urgent, and something in my heart breaks. I can’t pretend this isn’t happening anymore, can I? So I play for time.
“I was having frequent memory fugues, and I picked up a nasty little case of gray goo up top in the ship’s mass fraction tankage. That set my immune system off, and it began taking out memory traces. Dr. Hanta had to put me on antirobotics and give me a complete memory fixative in order to stop things progressing.” I move my hands behind my back and slowly shuffle backward, away from him and toward the wall. “I’d say she’s a surprisingly ethical practitioner, given the way everyone else here carries on in secret. Or do you know differently?”
“Hmm.” Fiore—fake-Fiore—leans over the assembler console and taps in some kind of code. “Yes, as a matter of fact I do.”
While he isn’t watching I take another step back until I bump up against shelves. Good. I’m already mentally preparing what I need to do next.
Fiore continues, implacably. “One of your predecessors here—yes, they’re still around in deep cover—got it worked out. Dr. Hanta isn’t her real name. She, or rather it, used to be a member of the Asclepian League.” I give a little gasp. “Yes, you do remember them, don’t you? She was a Vivisector, Reeve. One of the inner clade, dedicated to pursuing their own vision of how humanity should be restructured.”
“Thanks for reminding me what I came here to get away from,” I say shakily. “I’m going to be having nightmares about that for the next week.”
He turns and glares at me. “Are you stupid, or—” He stops himself. “I’m sorry. But if that’s all it means to you, you really are beyond—” He stabs at the console angrily. “Shit. I thought you’d be at least vaguely concerned for the rest of us in here.”
I take a deep breath, trying to get my nausea under control. The Asclepians were another of the dictatorship cults, a morphological collective. Much worse than the Solipsist Nation. They restructured polities one screaming mangled body at a time. If Dr. Hanta is an Asclepian, and she’s working with Yourdon and Fiore, the future they’re trying to sculpt is a thing of horror. “She can’t be. She just can’t.”
“And I suppose you think Major-Doctor Fiore is just a fat, egocentric psychiatrist?” He grins at me humorlessly. “Stop that, Reeve, I know what you’re up to. Hanta fucked with your head really well, didn’t she? Probably got you to give your consent first, too. They’re hot on formalities, Asclepians. Fiore and Yourdon are war criminals, too. Shit, most of the people here did things so nasty they want to forget everything. Do you remember why this is an experimental polity?”
“Remember?” That’s a new one on me.
“Oh. A memory fixative, that makes sense.” He takes a final poke at the console. It dings and turns luminous green. “Where would dictators be without our compliant amnesia? Make the collective lose its memory, you can conceal anything. ‘Who now remembers the Armenians?’ ” He takes a step back. “Listen, we’ll have to break whatever conditioning she loaded your implant with.”
My stomach churns for real this time. I feel sick. He’s a monster, and he wants to drag me back down into the turmoil I was in before Hanta sorted me out. And I’ve been up the ladder now, I know there’s no way out. We’re stuck here. Resistance is futile. I really ought to run for it, call the Bishop and get the police to take him away. But that’d be like betraying myself, too, wouldn’t it? “Did you kill Mick?” I whisper. “How did you get in that body?”
“Will you feel better if I say yes?” His voice is surprisingly gentle. “Or will you feel worse?”
“I’ll—” I take another gulp of air. “I want to know.