Read Online Singularity Sky by Charles Stross - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Charles Stross
Tags: SF
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attack fleet would have to jump around the Queen’s Head Nebula, an effectively impassable cloud within which three or four protostellar objects were forming. And to exercise Contingency Omega—delicately balancing their arrival time against the receipt of the first distress signal from Rochard’s World, so that no absolute causality violation would take place but their arrival would take their enemies by surprise—well, that would add even more jumps, taking them deep into their own future light cone before looping back into the past, just inside the spacelike event horizon.
It was, Bauer realized, going to be the longest-range military operation in the history of the New Republic. And—God help him—it was his job to make sure it worked.
Burya Rubenstein whacked on the crude log table with a worn-out felt boot.
“Silence!” he yelled. Nobody paid any attention; annoyed, he pulled out the compact pistol the trade machine had fabricated for him and fired into the ceiling. It only buzzed quietly, but the resulting fall of plaster dust got everybody’s attention. In the midst of all the choking and coughing, he barked, “Committee will come to order!”
“Why should we?” demanded a heckler at the back of the packed beer hall.
“Because if you don’t shut up and let me talk, you’ll have to answer to Politovsky and his dragoons. The worst I’ll do to you is shoot you—if the Duke gets his hands on you, you might have to work for a living!” Laughter.
“His living. What we’ve got here is an unprecedented opportunity to cast off the shackles of economic slavery that bind us to soil and factory, and bring about an age of enlightened social mobility in which we are free to better ourselves, contribute to the common good, and learn to work smarter and live faster. But, comrades, the forces of reaction are ruthless and vigilant; even now a Navy shuttle is ferrying soldiers to Outer Chelm, which they plan to take and turn into a strongpoint against us.”
Oleg Timoshevski stood up with an impressive whining and clanking. “No worries! We’ll smash ‘em!” He waved his left arm in the air, and his fist morphed into the unmistakable shape of a gun launcher. Having leapt into the pool of available personal augmentation techniques with the exuberance of the born cyborg, he could pose as a poster for the Transhu-manist Front, or even the Space and Freedom Party.
“That’s enough, Oleg.” Burya glared at him, then turned back to the audience. “We can’t afford to win this by violence,” he stressed. “In the short term, that may be tempting, but it will only serve to discredit us with the masses, and tradition tells us that, without the masses on our side, there can be no revolution. We have to prove that the forces of reaction corrode before our peace-loving forces for enterprise and progress without the need for repression—or ultimately all we will succeed in doing is supplanting those forces, and in so doing become indistinguishable from them. Is that what you want?”
“No! Yes! NO!” He winced at the furor that washed across the large room.
The delegates were becoming exuberant, inflated with a sense of their own irresistible destiny, and far too much free wheat beer and vodka. (It might be synthetic, but it was indistinguishable from the real thing.)
“Comrades!” A fair-haired man, middle-aged and of sallow complexion, stood inside the main door to the hall. “Your attention please! Reactionary echelons of the imperialist junta are moving to encircle the Northern Parade Field! The free market is in danger!”
“Oh bugger,” muttered Marcus Wolff.
“Go see to it, will you?” Burya asked. ‘Take Oleg, get him out of my hair, and I’ll hold the fort here. Try to find something for Jaroslav to do while you’re about it—he can juggle or fire his water pistol at the soldiers or something; I can’t do with him getting underfoot.“
“Will do that, boss. Are you
It was, Bauer realized, going to be the longest-range military operation in the history of the New Republic. And—God help him—it was his job to make sure it worked.
Burya Rubenstein whacked on the crude log table with a worn-out felt boot.
“Silence!” he yelled. Nobody paid any attention; annoyed, he pulled out the compact pistol the trade machine had fabricated for him and fired into the ceiling. It only buzzed quietly, but the resulting fall of plaster dust got everybody’s attention. In the midst of all the choking and coughing, he barked, “Committee will come to order!”
“Why should we?” demanded a heckler at the back of the packed beer hall.
“Because if you don’t shut up and let me talk, you’ll have to answer to Politovsky and his dragoons. The worst I’ll do to you is shoot you—if the Duke gets his hands on you, you might have to work for a living!” Laughter.
“His living. What we’ve got here is an unprecedented opportunity to cast off the shackles of economic slavery that bind us to soil and factory, and bring about an age of enlightened social mobility in which we are free to better ourselves, contribute to the common good, and learn to work smarter and live faster. But, comrades, the forces of reaction are ruthless and vigilant; even now a Navy shuttle is ferrying soldiers to Outer Chelm, which they plan to take and turn into a strongpoint against us.”
Oleg Timoshevski stood up with an impressive whining and clanking. “No worries! We’ll smash ‘em!” He waved his left arm in the air, and his fist morphed into the unmistakable shape of a gun launcher. Having leapt into the pool of available personal augmentation techniques with the exuberance of the born cyborg, he could pose as a poster for the Transhu-manist Front, or even the Space and Freedom Party.
“That’s enough, Oleg.” Burya glared at him, then turned back to the audience. “We can’t afford to win this by violence,” he stressed. “In the short term, that may be tempting, but it will only serve to discredit us with the masses, and tradition tells us that, without the masses on our side, there can be no revolution. We have to prove that the forces of reaction corrode before our peace-loving forces for enterprise and progress without the need for repression—or ultimately all we will succeed in doing is supplanting those forces, and in so doing become indistinguishable from them. Is that what you want?”
“No! Yes! NO!” He winced at the furor that washed across the large room.
The delegates were becoming exuberant, inflated with a sense of their own irresistible destiny, and far too much free wheat beer and vodka. (It might be synthetic, but it was indistinguishable from the real thing.)
“Comrades!” A fair-haired man, middle-aged and of sallow complexion, stood inside the main door to the hall. “Your attention please! Reactionary echelons of the imperialist junta are moving to encircle the Northern Parade Field! The free market is in danger!”
“Oh bugger,” muttered Marcus Wolff.
“Go see to it, will you?” Burya asked. ‘Take Oleg, get him out of my hair, and I’ll hold the fort here. Try to find something for Jaroslav to do while you’re about it—he can juggle or fire his water pistol at the soldiers or something; I can’t do with him getting underfoot.“
“Will do that, boss. Are you
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