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Peter Watts 227 Blindsight
"Surely the onboard's shielded. Theseus is shielded."
Bates nodded. "As much as feasible. But perfect shielding is
perfect blindness, and this is not the kind of neighborhood where
you want to keep your eyes closed."
Actually, it was. But I took her point.
I took her other point, too, the one she didn't speak aloud: And
you missed it. Something sitting right there in ConSensus for
anyone to see. Top-of-the-line synthesist like you.
"Sarasti knows what he's doing, I guess," I admitted, endlessly
aware that he might be listening. "He hasn't been wrong yet, as far
as we know."
"As far as we can know," Bates said.
"If you could second-guess a vampire, you wouldn't need a
vampire," I remembered.
She smiled faintly. "Isaac was a good man. You can't always
believe the PR, though."
"You don't buy it" I asked, but she was already thinking she'd
said too much. I threw out a hook baited with just the right mix of
skepticism and deference: "Sarasti did know where those
scramblers would be. Nailed it almost the meter, out of that whole
maze."
"I suppose that might have taken some kind of superhuman
logic," she admitted, thinking I was so fucking dumb she couldn't
believe it.
"What" I said.
Bates shrugged. "Or maybe he just realized that since
Rorschach was growing its own crew, we'd run into more every
time we went in. No matter where we landed."
ConSensus bleeped into my silence. "Orbital maneuvers starting
in five," Sarasti announced. "Inlays and wireless prosthetics
offline in ninety. That's all."
Bates shut down the display. "I'm going to ride this out in the
bridge. Illusion of control and all that. You"
"My tent, I think."
She nodded, and braced to jump, and hesitated.
"By the way," she told me, "yes."
"Sorry"