Read Online Rifters 2 - Maelstrom by Peter Watts - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Peter Watts
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flee into the ocean, but the drones took no notice of her.
No initiative , she reflected. They don't see anything they're not programmed to look for. Or perhaps their senses weren't as finely-tuned as she'd feared. Perhaps they just couldn't see her implants; maybe her aura was too faint, or too far away. Maybe botflies didn't see as deeply into the EM spectrum as she'd feared.
I was all alone, that first time , she thought. The whole beach was closed off. I bet that's it. They pay attention to trespassers…
So did Amitav, evidently. That was shaping up to be a problem.
* * *
He appeared at the cycler the next morning with a dead botfly in his arms. It looked a bit like a turtle shell she'd once seen in a museum, except for the vents and instruments studding the ventral surface. It was split along its equatorial seam; black smudges lined the breach.
"Can you fix this?" Amitav asked. "Any of it?"
Clarke shook her head. "Don't know anything about botflies." She lifted the carapace anyway. Inside, burned electronics nested under a layer of soot.
She ran one thumb along a small pebbled convexity, felt the compound lenses of a visual cluster beneath the grime. Some of the tech was vaguely familiar, but…
"No," she said, setting it on the sand. "Sorry."
Amitav shrugged and sat, cross-legged. "I did not expect so," he said. "But one can always hope, and you seem to have such familiarity with machines yourself…"
She smiled faintly, freshly aware of the implants crowding her thorax.
"I expect you will be going to the fence," Amitav said after a moment. "Your people will let you through when they see you are one of them."
She looked to the east. Off in the distance, the border towers rose from a fog of human bodies and trampled scrub. She'd heard about the high-voltage lines and the razorwire strung between them. She'd heard other things, too, about refugees so driven by their own desperation they'd climbed seven or eight meters before the juice and their own cumulative dismemberment had killed them off. Their lacerated remains were left rotting on the wires, the story went—whether as an act of deterrence or simple neglect was unclear.
Clarke knew it was all just alligator tales. Nobody over thirteen believed such bullshit, and the people here—for all their numbers—didn't seem motivated enough to hold a garage sale, much less storm the battlements. What was the word Amitav had used?
Docile .
In a way it was a shame, though. She'd never actually been to the fences. It might have been interesting to check them out.
Being dead had all sorts of little drawbacks.
"Surely you have a home to go to. Surely you do not wish to stay here ," Amitav prodded.
"No," she said to both questions.
He waited. She waited with him.
Finally, he stood and glanced down at the dead botfly. "I do not know what made this one crash. Usually they work quite well. I believe you've already seen one or two pass by, yes? Your eyes may be empty, but they are not blind."
Clarke held his gaze and said nothing.
He nudged the little wreck with his toe. "These are not blind either," he said, and walked away.
* * *
It was a hole in darkness: a window to another world. It was set at the height of a child's eyes, and it looked into a kitchen she'd not seen in twenty years.
Onto a person she hadn't seen in almost that long.
Her father knelt in front of her, folded down from adult height to regard her eye-to-eye. He had a serious look on his face. He grasped her wrist with one hand; something dangled in the other.
She waited for the familiar sickness to rise in her throat, but it didn't come. The vision was a child's; the viewer was an adult, hardened, adapted, accustomed by now to trials that reduced child-abuse from nightmare down to trite cliché.
She tried to look around; her field of view refused to change. She could not see her mother.
Par for the course.
Her father's mouth moved; no words came out. The image was
No initiative , she reflected. They don't see anything they're not programmed to look for. Or perhaps their senses weren't as finely-tuned as she'd feared. Perhaps they just couldn't see her implants; maybe her aura was too faint, or too far away. Maybe botflies didn't see as deeply into the EM spectrum as she'd feared.
I was all alone, that first time , she thought. The whole beach was closed off. I bet that's it. They pay attention to trespassers…
So did Amitav, evidently. That was shaping up to be a problem.
* * *
He appeared at the cycler the next morning with a dead botfly in his arms. It looked a bit like a turtle shell she'd once seen in a museum, except for the vents and instruments studding the ventral surface. It was split along its equatorial seam; black smudges lined the breach.
"Can you fix this?" Amitav asked. "Any of it?"
Clarke shook her head. "Don't know anything about botflies." She lifted the carapace anyway. Inside, burned electronics nested under a layer of soot.
She ran one thumb along a small pebbled convexity, felt the compound lenses of a visual cluster beneath the grime. Some of the tech was vaguely familiar, but…
"No," she said, setting it on the sand. "Sorry."
Amitav shrugged and sat, cross-legged. "I did not expect so," he said. "But one can always hope, and you seem to have such familiarity with machines yourself…"
She smiled faintly, freshly aware of the implants crowding her thorax.
"I expect you will be going to the fence," Amitav said after a moment. "Your people will let you through when they see you are one of them."
She looked to the east. Off in the distance, the border towers rose from a fog of human bodies and trampled scrub. She'd heard about the high-voltage lines and the razorwire strung between them. She'd heard other things, too, about refugees so driven by their own desperation they'd climbed seven or eight meters before the juice and their own cumulative dismemberment had killed them off. Their lacerated remains were left rotting on the wires, the story went—whether as an act of deterrence or simple neglect was unclear.
Clarke knew it was all just alligator tales. Nobody over thirteen believed such bullshit, and the people here—for all their numbers—didn't seem motivated enough to hold a garage sale, much less storm the battlements. What was the word Amitav had used?
Docile .
In a way it was a shame, though. She'd never actually been to the fences. It might have been interesting to check them out.
Being dead had all sorts of little drawbacks.
"Surely you have a home to go to. Surely you do not wish to stay here ," Amitav prodded.
"No," she said to both questions.
He waited. She waited with him.
Finally, he stood and glanced down at the dead botfly. "I do not know what made this one crash. Usually they work quite well. I believe you've already seen one or two pass by, yes? Your eyes may be empty, but they are not blind."
Clarke held his gaze and said nothing.
He nudged the little wreck with his toe. "These are not blind either," he said, and walked away.
* * *
It was a hole in darkness: a window to another world. It was set at the height of a child's eyes, and it looked into a kitchen she'd not seen in twenty years.
Onto a person she hadn't seen in almost that long.
Her father knelt in front of her, folded down from adult height to regard her eye-to-eye. He had a serious look on his face. He grasped her wrist with one hand; something dangled in the other.
She waited for the familiar sickness to rise in her throat, but it didn't come. The vision was a child's; the viewer was an adult, hardened, adapted, accustomed by now to trials that reduced child-abuse from nightmare down to trite cliché.
She tried to look around; her field of view refused to change. She could not see her mother.
Par for the course.
Her father's mouth moved; no words came out. The image was
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