PeterWatts_Blindsight

Peter Watts 271 Blindsight
And you hid it from me. You all did. You and your whole gang
and Amanda too. You've been hashing this out for days and you
went out of your way to cover it up.
How did I miss it? How did I miss it?
"Jukka told us not to discuss it with you," Susan admitted.
"Why? This is exactly the kind of thing I'm out here for!"
"He said you'd—resist. Unless it was handled properly."
"Handled—Susan, he assaulted me! You saw what he—"
"We didn't know he was going to do that. None of us did."
"And he did it why? To win an argument?"
"That's what he says."
"Do you believe him?"
"Probably." After a moment she shrugged. "Who knows? He's a
vampire. He's—opaque."
"But his record—I mean, he's, he's never resorted to overt
violence before—"
She shook her head. "Why should he? He doesn't have to
convince the rest of us of anything. We have to follow his orders
regardless."
"So do I," I reminded her.
"He's not trying to convince you, Siri."
Ah.
I was only a conduit, after all. Sarasti hadn't been making his
case to me at all; he'd been making it through me, and—
—and he was planning for a second round. Why go to such
extremes to present a case to Earth, if Earth was irrelevant? Sarasti
didn't expect the game to end out here. He expected Earth to do
something in light of his—perspective.
"But what difference does it make?" I wondered aloud.
She just looked at me.
"Even if he's right, how does it change anything? How does this
—" I raised my repaired hand—"change anything? Scramblers are
intelligent, whether they're sentient or not. They're a potential
threat either way. We still don't know. So what difference does it
make? Why did he do this to me? How does it matter?"
Susan raised her face to Big Ben and didn't answer.
Sascha returned her face to me, and tried to.