Glasshouse - Charles Stross [64]
“Book withdrawals,” she says. “Possibly even what pages people look at. You notice they’re all hardcovers? You’d be surprised how small even the dark age technés could make a tracking device. You could build them into book spines, able to sense which pages the reader was opening the book to. All without violating protocol.”
“But protocol—” I stop. The television doesn’t look very complex, technically, but is it? Really? What goes into a machine like that? There must be either cameras or a really complex rendering system . . .
“The dark ages weren’t just dark, they were fast. We’re talking about the period when our ancestors went from needing an abacus to add two numbers together to building the first emotional machines. They went from witch doctors with poisonous chemicals—who couldn’t even reattach a cleanly severed limb—to tissue regeneration, full control of the proteome and genome, and growing body parts to order. From using rockets to get into orbit to the first tethered lift systems. And they did all that in less than three gigs, ninety old-time years.”
She pauses for a sip of tea. “It is very easy for us moderns to underestimate the dark age orthos. But it’s a habit you’ll shed after you’ve been here for a while, and to give them their due, the clergy—the experimenters—have been here longer than the rest of us. Even Harshaw, and he works for them.” She pronounces his name with distaste, and I wonder what he’s done to offend her.
“You think they’ve got more of a handle on this than we do?” I ask, intrigued.
“Damn right.” (Yes, she says “damn”: she’s obviously getting into the spirit of things, speaking in the archaic slang the real old-timers would have used.) “I think there’s more going on here than meets the eye. They’ve made a lot more progress toward stabilizing this society than you’d expect for just five megs of runtime.” Her eyes flicker sharply toward a corner of the room right above the door, and I follow the direction of her gaze. “In part it’s because they can see everything, hear everything, including this. In part.”
“But surely that’s not all?”
She smiles at me enigmatically. “Break’s over, kid. Time to go back to work.”
I get home late, bone-tired from filing returned books and standing behind a counter for hours. I have a gnawing sense of apprehension as I walk in the door. The lights are on in the living room and I can hear the television. I head for the kitchen first to get something to eat, and that’s where I am when Sam finds me.
“Where’ve you been?” he demands.
“Work.” I attack a tin of vegetable soup and a loaf of bread tiredly.
“Oh.” Pause. “So what are you doing?”
He’s put the butter in the refrigerator so it’s as hard as a rock. “Training to be the new city librarian. Three days a week at present, but it’s an eleven-hour day.”
“Oh.”
He bends over to put a dirty plate in the washing machine. I manage to stop him just in time—it’s full of clean stuff. “No, you need to unload it first, okay?”
“Huh.” He looks irritated. “So the city needs a new librarian?”
“Yes.” I don’t owe him any explanations, do I? Do I?
“Do you know Janis?”
“Janis—” He looks thoughtful. “No. I didn’t even know we had a library.”
“She’s leaving in a couple of months, and they need someone to replace her.”
He begins to remove plates from the bottom tray in the washing machine and stack them on the work-top. “She doesn’t like the job? If it’s so bad, why are you taking it?”
“It’s not that.” I finally get the soup out of the can and into a saucepan on the red-glowing burner. “She’s leaving because she’s pregnant.” I turn round to watch him. He’s focusing on the dishwasher, pointedly ignoring me. Still sulking, I suspect.
“Pregnant? Huh.” He sounds a little surprised. “Why would anyone want to have a baby in—”
“We’re fertile, Sam.”
I manage to catch the plates he was unloading just in time. I straighten up, about half a meter from his nose, and he’s too flustered to avoid my gaze.
“We’re fertile?”
“That’s what Janis says, and judging by her state, I think she’s probably got the evidence to prove