Grail - Elizabeth Bear [77]
Danilaw felt as if he were confronted by an animate, talking gas chamber, or an iron maiden with pretty manners. What was less ethical than giving artificial intelligence personalities? Than creating—in essence—a slave race: creatures with agency and identity but only the semblance of free will?
Danilaw’s people still used smart systems. But they had long since abandoned the horrific practice of making people of them, and then enslaving the people they had made.
As Danilaw’s pulse accelerated and his oxygen usage spiked, he saw the motion of Amanda’s suit; she had rocked back on her heels. He wondered what she was experiencing. Her knowledge of the relevant history was more detailed than his own; Danilaw suspected that made this encounter all the more unsettling.
If Amanda was more discomfited, she also recovered from it better. “Hello, Samael,” she said. “I am Captain Amanda Friar. This is Danilaw Bakare, City Administrator of Bad Landing.”
The Angel’s sunflower-petal eyebrows quirked. “I was provided with your files,” he said. “If you will come with me, I will bring you to my Captain.”
They fell into step beside him. The corridor was wide enough for all three abreast, though the uneven surface of the interwoven, intergrown branches or trunks made the footing akin to skipping over cobblestones in reduced gravity. If Danilaw took a header, he wouldn’t fall hard.
“Feel free to ask any questions you like,” Samael said. “We are eager to share our knowledge with you as an expression of goodwill, and to establish that we can help your society become more flexible and adaptive. Also, you are welcome to use our resources. If it would make you more comfortable, please feel free to remove your armor.”
Samael gestured around magnanimously. Danilaw blinked, understanding suddenly that for a culture in which every atom of oxygen and molecule of water was an irreplaceable consumable, this was an exceedingly generous offer. Danilaw was accustomed to metering his object and resource usage, observing the Obligations, wasting neither personal nor collective assets. But to a society such as this, centuries out from a habitable world—they had what they had, and there would be no getting more. It went beyond Obligation, beyond social justice. Parsimony was their means of survival.
His confusion and revelation seemed transparent to the Angel, who kept talking as if conducting a familiar guided tour. “You have our word that you may unseal in safety. The Captain has ordered our microfauna and flora to treat your persons and equipment as sterile zones. You will not be colonized.”
“Wait,” Danilaw said. “Your Captain ordered this? Your microbes follow instructions?”
Samael gave him what he would have sworn was a pitying look. “They obey the Captain. Are they not part of the world’s ecology?”
Danilaw saw Captain Amanda’s eyelashes flicker through the wide faceplate of her pressure suit. He thought she smiled, a wry expression he read as wonder, but she concealed it quickly.
“Our viruses aren’t so civilized,” she said. “For your sakes, we should remain sealed.”
“Also,” Danilaw said apologetically, “your atmosphere is slightly thin and sour by our standards. We need to supplement oxygen. How do you—your people, I mean—survive in such low saturations?”
The Angel tossed flowing straw-colored locks over his shoulders. It might be some vegetable fiber, or the mane of some animal that Danilaw did not know. “Naked mole rats.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Naked mole rats,” Samael repeated. “They’re an Earth species of colony-living burrowing rodent that is—or was; they may be extinct on the old planet, although we have some—supremely adapted to the, well, the exceptionally nasty conditions found in their lairs. Centuries ago, Cynric the Sorceress introduced their adaptations to deoxygenated and toxic atmospheres into the human genome. This enabled our crew to survive and flourish despite the damage wrought to the world by the Breaking.”
“Cynric … the Sorceress?