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Peter Watts 172 Blindsight
twisted anatomy to keep rock-steady eyes on the tiny wound we'd
burned in its side. Our limpet tent covered it like a blister; inside,
Jack fed us a second, first-person view of the unfolding
experiment.
Sir. We know Rorschach is inhabited. Do we want to risk
further provoking the inhabitants Do we want to risk killing
them
Sarasti hadn't quite looked at her, and hadn't quite spoken. If he
had, he might have said I do not understand how meat like you
survived to adulthood.
Eleven minutes to apogee, and Amanda Bates was lamenting the
fact—not for the first time— that this mission was not under
military jurisdiction.
We were waiting for maximum distance before performing the
experiment. Rorschach might interpret this as a hostile act, Sarasti
had conceded in a voice that contained no trace of irony
whatsoever. Now he stood before us, watching ConSensus play on
the table. Reflections writhed across his naked eyes, not quite
masking the deeper reflections behind them.
Ten minutes to apogee. Susan James was wishing that
Cunningham would put out that goddamned cigarrette. The smoke
stank on its way to the ventilators, and anyway, it wasn't necessary.
It was just an anachronistic affectation, an attention-getting device;
if he needed the nicotine a patch could have soothed his tremors
just as easily, without the smoke and the stink.
That wasn't all she was thinking, though. She was wondering
why Cunningham had been summoned to Sarasti's quarters earlier
in the shift, why he'd looked at her so strangely afterward. I
wondered about that myself. A quick check on ConSensus
timestamps showed that her medical file had been accessed during
that period. I checked those stats, let the shapes bounce between
hemispheres: part of my brain locked on elevated oxytocin as the
probable reason for that conference. There was an eighty-two
percent chance that James had become too trusting for Sarasti's
liking.
I had no idea how I knew that. I never did.
Nine minutes to apogee