Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [136]
"Is it real?" said Lindsay.
"I think so. Sometimes I almost see it. A kind of flickering. A mirror-colored thing."
"What did the Investors say?"
"They denied everything. They said I was deluded." She hesitated. "And they weren't the last to say so." She regretted confessing it at once. But the burden had eased. She looked at him, daring to hope.
"An alien, then," Lindsay said. "Not one of the nineteen known species."
"You believe me," she said. "You think that it's really here."
"We must believe each other," Lindsay said. "Life is better that way." He looked about the narrow room carefully, as if testing his eyes. "I'd like to lure it into the open."
"It won't come out," the girl said. "Believe me, I've begged it many times." "We mustn't try it here," Lindsay said. "Any manifestation would alarm Kitsune. She feels secure in this world. We must consider her feelings." His sincerity startled her. It hadn't occurred to her that her captor might have feelings, or that anyone might relate, in a personal way, to that titanic mass of flesh.
He picked up the rat, which began squealing loudly, with desperate energy.
He examined it with such guileless interest that, before she could help herself, she felt a stab of pity for him, an urge to protect him. The feeling surprised and warmed her.
He said, "We'll be leaving soon. You'll be coming with us." He put the rat in the pocket of his long coat. It rested there quietly. The history of the Schismatrix was one long racking chronicle of change. The population had reached nine billion. Within the Ring Council, power had slipped from the narcotized hands of the Zen Serotonists. After forty years of their reign, new Shaper ideologues embraced the aggressive schemes of visionary Galacticism.
The new creed had spread slowly. It was born in the interstellar embassies, where ambassadors broke human limits in their struggle to grasp alien ways of life. Now the Galacticist prophets stood ready to abandon humanity entirely, to achieve a Galactic consciousness where mere loyalty to species was obsolete.
Once again detente had shattered. The Mechanists and Shapers fought in bitter rivalry for the favor of aliens. Of the nineteen alien races, only five had shown even the vaguest interest in a closer relationship with humankind. The Chondrule Cloud Processors were willing to move in, but only if Venus could be atomized for easier digestion. The Nerve Coral Aquatics expressed mild interest in invading the Earth, but this would mean breaking the sacred tradition of Interdict. The Culture Ghosts were willing to join with anyone who could endure them, but their hideous effects on the Schismatric diplomatic corps had made them objects of genuine horror.
The gasbags of Fomalhaut offered most. It had taken many decades to master their "language," which was best expressed as complex unstable states of atmospheric dynamics. Once true contact had been established, progress was rapid. Fomalhaut was an enormous star with a huge asteroid belt rich in heavy metals.
The asteroid belt was useless to the gasbags, who disliked space travel. They were, however, interested in Jupiter and planned to seed it with aerial krill.
The Investors were willing to handle transportation, though even their huge ships could carry only a handful of surgically deflated gasbags per trip. Controversy had raged for decades. The Mechanists had their own Galacti-cist faction, who struggled to grasp the mind-shattering physics of the sinister Hijack Boosters. The Boosters, like the Investors, possessed a technique of faster-than-light travel. The