PeterWatts_Blindsight

Peter Watts 48 Blindsight
He let the lie sit there for a while.
"Anyway," he said at last. "I just wanted to wish you luck."
Which wasn't exactly true either.
"Thanks. I appreciate that."
"Kick their alien asses. If aliens have asses."
"There's five of us, Pag. Nine if you count the backups. We're
not exactly an army."
"Just an expression, fellow mammal. Bury the hatchet. Damn
the torpedoes. Soothe the serpent."
Raise the white flag, I thought.
"I guess you're busy," he said, "I'll—"
"Look, you want to get together? In airspace? I haven't been to
QuBit's in a while."
"Love to, Pod. Unfortunately I'm in Mankoya. Splice'n'dice
workshop."
"What, you mean physically?"
"Cutting-edge research. Old-school habits."
"Too bad."
"Anyway, I'll let you go. Just wanted, you know—"
"Thanks," I said again.
"So, you know. Bye," Robert Paglino told me. Which was,
when you got down to it, the reason he'd called.
He wasn't expecting another chance.
Pag blamed me for the way it had ended with Chelsea. Fair
enough. I blamed him for the way it began.
He'd gone into neuroeconomics at least partly because his
childhood buddy had turned into a pod person before his eyes. I'd
ended up in Synthesis for roughly the same reason. Our paths had
diverged, and we didn't see each other in the flesh all that often;
but two decades after I'd brutalized a handful of children on his
behalf, Robert Paglino was still my best and only friend.
"You need to seriously thaw out," he told me, "And I know just
the lady to handle the oven mitts."
"That is perhaps the worst use of metaphor in the history of
*