The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [91]
"She tells me you're measuring up," Clausen said, when he was called to the prefabricated shack where she drew up schedules and dolled out work.
He gave a shrug, too tired to care whether she was impressed or not. "I've done my best. I don't know what more you want from me."
She looked up from her planning.
"Remorse for what you did?"
"I can't show remorse for something that wasn't a crime. We were trying to bring something new into the world, that's all. You think we had the slightest idea of the consequences?"
"You made a good living."
"And I'm expected to feel bad about that? I've been thinking it over, Clausen, and I've decided your argument's horseshit. I didn't create the enemy. The original artilects were already out there, already in the Realm."
"They hadn't noticed us."
"And the global population had only just spiked at eight billion. Who's to say they weren't about to notice, or they wouldn't do so in the next hundred years, or the next thousand? At least the artilects I helped create gave us some warning of what we were facing."
"Your artilects are trying to kill us."
"Some of them. And some of them are also trying to keep us alive. Sorry, but that's not an argument."
She put down her pen and leaned back in her chair. "You've got some fight back in you."
"If you expect me to apologise for myself, you've got a long wait coming. I think you brought me back to rub my nose in the world I helped bring about. I agree, it's a fucked-up, miserable future. It couldn't get much more fucked-up if it tried. But I didn't build it. And I'm not responsible for you losing anyone."
Her face twitched; it was as if he had reached across the desk and slapped her. "Nero told you."
"I had a right to know why you were treating me the way you were. But you know what? I don't care. If transferring your anger on to me helps you, go ahead. I was the billionaire CEO of a global company. I was doing something wrong if I didn't wake up with a million knives in my back."
She dismissed him from the office, and Gaunt left with the feeling that he'd scored a minor victory but at the possible cost of something larger. He had stood up to Clausen but did that make him more respectable in her eyes, or someone even more deserving of her antipathy?
That evening he was in the commons, sitting at the back of the room as wireless reports filtered in from the other rigs. Most of the news was unexceptional, but there had been three more breaches - sea-dragons being pushed through from the Realm - and one of them had achieved sufficient coherence to attack and damage an OTEC plant, immediately severing power to three rigs. Backup systems had cut in but failures had occurred and as a consequence around ioo sleepers had been lost to unscheduled warming. None of the sleepers had survived the rapid revival, but even if they had, there would have been no option but to euthanize them shortly afterwards. A hundred new minds might not have made much difference to the Realm's clock speed but it would have established a risky precedent.
One sleeper, however, would soon have to be warmed. The details were sketchy, but Gaunt learned that there had been another accident out on one of the rigs. A man called Steiner had been hurt in some way.
The morning after, Gaunt was engaged in his duties on one of the rig's high platforms when he saw the helicopter coming in with Steiner aboard. He put down his tools and watched the arrival.
Even before the aircraft had touched down on the pad, caretakers were assembling just beyond the painted circle of the rotor hazard area. The helicopter kissed the ground against a breath of crosswind and the caretakers mobbed inward, almost preventing the door from being opened. Gaunt squinted against the wind, trying to pick out faces. A stretchered form emerged from the cabin, borne aloft by many pairs of willing hands. Even from his distant