Read Online Beyond the Rift by Peter Watts - Free Book Online

in the direction of travel. Your center of mass just sits there in, well, the center of your mass.”
    A spastic Dixian head-shake. “ Do have those things!”
    “Sure we do. But for the longest time, we didn’t know it.”
    His foot taps an agitated tattoo on the deck.
    “It’s the history of the species,” I explain. “We think we’ve worked everything out, we think we’ve solved all the mysteries, and then someone finds some niggling little data point that doesn’t fit the paradigm. Every time we try to paper over the crack it gets bigger, and before you know it our whole worldview unravels. It’s happened time and again. One day mass is a constraint; the next it’s a requirement. The things we think we know—they change , Dix. And we have to change with them.”
    “But—”
    “The chimp can’t change. The rules it’s following are ten billion years old and it’s got no fucking imagination and really that’s not anyone’s fault, that’s just people who didn’t know how else to keep the mission stable across deep time. They wanted to keep us on-track so they built something that couldn’t go off it; but they also knew that things change , and that’s why we’re out here, Dix. To deal with things the chimp can’t.”
    “The alien,” Dix says.
    “The alien.”
    “Chimp deals with it just fine.”
    “How? By killing it?”
    “Not our fault it’s in the way. It’s no threat—”
    “I don’t care whether it’s a threat or not! It’s alive, and it’s intelligent, and killing it just to expand some alien empire—”
    “ Human empire. Our empire.” Suddenly Dix’s hands have stopped twitching. Suddenly he stands still as stone.
    I snort. “What do you know about humans?”
    “ Am one.”
    “You’re a fucking trilobite. You ever see what comes out of those gates once they’re online?”
    “Mostly nothing.” He pauses, thinking back. “Couple of—ships once, maybe.”
    “Well, I’ve seen a lot more than that, and believe me, if those things were ever human it was a passing phase.”
    “But—”
    “Dix—” I take a deep breath, try to get back on message. “Look, it’s not your fault. You’ve been getting all your info from a moron stuck on a rail. But we’re not doing this for Humanity, we’re not doing it for Earth. Earth is gone , don’t you understand that? The sun scorched it black a billion years after we left. Whatever we’re working for, it—it won’t even talk to us.”
    “Yeah? Then why do this? Why not just, just quit ?”
    He really doesn’t know.
    “We tried,” I say.
    “And?”
    “And your chimp shut off our life support.”
    For once, he has nothing to say.
    “It’s a machine , Dix. Why can’t you get that? It’s programmed . It can’t change.”
    “ We’re machines, just built from different things. We change.”
    “Yeah? Last time I checked, you were sucking so hard on that thing’s tit you couldn’t even kill your cortical link.”
    “How I learn . No reason to change.”
    “How about acting like a damn human once in a while? How about developing a little rapport with the folks who might have to save your miserable life next time you go EVA? That enough of a reason for you? Because I don’t mind telling you, right now I don’t trust you as far as I could throw the tac tank. I don’t even know for sure who I’m talking to right now.”
    “Not my fault.” For the first time I see something outside the usual gamut of fear, confusion, and simpleminded computation playing across his face. “That’s you , that’s all of you. You talk— sideways. Think sideways. You all do, and it hurts .” Something hardens in his face. “Didn’t even need you online for this,” he growls. “Didn’t want you. Could have managed the whole build myself, told Chimp I could do it—”
    “But the chimp thought you should wake me up anyway, and you always roll over for the chimp, don’t you? Because the chimp always knows best, the chimp’s