Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [135]
His bluntness filled her with misgivings. She was at a loss. The silence stretched uncomfortably. "I have a present for you," she said. "An ancient heirloom." She crossed the narrow cell to lift a rectangular wire cage, shrouded in peach-colored velvet. She lifted the cage cover and showed him the clan treasure, an albino laboratory rat. It ran back and forth through its cage, mincing along with bizarre, repetitive precision. "It is one of the first creatures ever to attain physical immortality. An ancient lab specimen. It is over three hundred years old."
Lindsay said, "You're very generous." He lifted the cage and examined it, Within it, the rat, its capacity to learn completely exhausted by age, had been reduced to absolute rote behavior. The twitchings of its muzzle, even the movement of its eyes, were utterly stereotyped.
The old man watched it searchingly. She knew he would get no response. There was nothing in the rat's jellied pink eyes, not even the dimmest flicker of animal awareness. "Has it ever been out of the cage?" he said.
"Not in centuries, Chancellor. It's too valuable." Lindsay opened the cage. Its routines shattered, the rat cowered beside the steel tube of its water drip, its sinewy furred limbs trembling. Lindsay wiggled his gloved fingers beside the entrance. "Don't be afraid," he told the rat seriously. "There's a whole world out here." Some ancient, corroded reflex kicked over in the rat's head. With a squeal it launched itself across the cage at Lindsay's hand, clawing and biting in convulsive fury. Vera gasped and leaped forward, shocked at his action, appalled by the rat's response. Lindsay gestured her back and lifted his hand, watching in pity as the rat attacked him. Beneath his torn right glove, hard prosthetic fingers gleamed with black and copper gridwork. He grasped the squirming animal with gentle firmness, watching to see that it did not crack its teeth. "Prison has set its mind," he said. "It will take a long time to melt the bars behind its eyes." He smiled. "Luckily, time is in great supply."
The rat stopped struggling. It panted in the throes of some rodent epiphany. Lindsay set it gently on the tabletop beside the Market monitor. It struggled to its pink feet and began to pace in agitation, turning in its tracks at the former limits of its cage.
"It can't change," Vera told him. "Its capacities are exhausted."
"Nonsense," Lindsay said. "He merely needs to make a Prigoginic leap to a new level of behavior." The calm assertion of his ideology frightened her. Something must have shown in her face. He tugged the torn glove from his hand.
"Hope is our duty," he said. "You must always hope."
"For years we hoped we could heal Philip Constantine," Vera said. "Now we know better. We are ready to trade him to you for our own safe-conduct." Lindsay looked at her seriously. "This is cruelty," he said.
"He was your enemy," she said. "We wanted to make amends."
"For me, you are that chance."
It was working. He still remembered Vera Kelland.
"Don't deceive yourself," he said. "I don't offer true recompense. Czarina-Kluster must fall someday. Nations don't last in this era. Only people last, only plans and hopes. ... I can only offer you what I have. I don't have safety. I have freedom."
"Posthumanism," she said. "It's your state ideology. Of course we'll adapt."
"I thought you had your own convictions, Vera. You're a Galacticist." She ran her fingers lightly, absently, over one of the gill seams in her neck. "I learned my politics in the observation sphere. In Fomalhaut. The Embassy." She hesitated. "Life there changed me more than you could know. There are things I can't explain."
"There's something in this room," he said.
She was stunned. "Yes," she blurted. "You felt it? Not many do."
"What is it? Something from the Fomalhaut aliens? The gasbags?"
"They know nothing about it."
"But you do," he said. "Tell me."
She was in too far to back out. She spoke reluctantly.