QE3-QW-Ch15-18-未校对

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

August, 2515

Manafwa was the inner of two gas giants in the Bachwezi system. Belisarius watched its translucent blue methane clouds three hundred thousand kilometers below. They turned with deceptive calm. Manafwa’s hot core churned the entire atmosphere into convection cells that mixed everything to near-featurelessness. When Belisarius adjusted his augmented eyes to catch infrared and ultraviolet, the wind streams appeared in blurred brushstrokes, converging on a south polar double storm system. Beautiful. Self-organizing. Logical.

Manafwa had captured dozens of moons, four of them sizable iron-nickel nuggets dozens of kilometers in diameter. In the distance, his telescoped vision could make out solar-powered mining and smelting operations on the nearest moon. All around the lunar orbits furious construction was happening in new shipyards, factories and orbital fortifications.

General Rudo had set up her military headquarters here, rather than at the capital at Bachwezi or its moon habitat Kitara. The Manafwa yards didn’t need Rudo here so Belisarius guessed that she headquartered here because of continuing assassination dangers.

The local magnetic field altered as Cassandra floated near and touched his arm. She watched the fluid dynamic artistry below, as he returned his visual senses to normal. False colors faded. Storms melted into the methane haze. The sounds in the room changed too. Voices impinged on the fragile, temporary tranquility he’d constructed: Anglo-Spanish, smatterings of Shona, and the strange dialect of français 8.3 that had evolved in the forty-year isolation of the Sixth Expeditionary. When the voices quieted, he rotated to face the room. General Rudo was floating in after her bodyguards. Some of the other guests began floating to seats.

Two Puppet representatives, Gates-15 and Rosalie Johns-10 huddled with a small bishop Belisarius had seen several times on the news in the Free City, Grassie-6. Rosalie, his friend once, eyed him furtively. It was unlikely she was his friend anymore. Three Bank representatives formed a similar cluster, their external AI and sensory augmentation shining against brown skin. Through his electroplaques, Belisarius felt the gentle white noise of computation emitting faintly in the EM. Iekanjika followed Rudo into the stateroom, her eyes sweeping the attendees with neutral evaluation, not lingering on Belisarius any more than on anyone else, although he saw her visual scan dip to the service band on his wrist that contained Saint Matthew.

Rudo made her way around the room, greeting each guest. A politician from Bachwezi followed, shaking hands. He was introduced as Foreign Minister Akuffo, Rudo’s cabinet colleague. Rudo had the barest of smiles for Belisarius before she was introduced to Cassandra and Saint Matthew. When she came to the Bank representatives, four were introduced instead of three. They apparently carried an AI, one important enough to be introduced as a person. She sat at the head of the table. In the months since Belisarius had last seen Rudo, she’d aged. The sixty-two year old woman now looked her years, her black hair gone to gray, wrinkles etching deep into dark skin, her expression more stately and commanding. The uncertain, overcompensating twenty-two year old woman he’d met in the past, the one who’d ordered him beaten, was there too, but leavened with something more substantial.

Belisarius took a spot beside Rosalie, across from the Bank representatives. The foreign minister strapped into the seat beside Cassandra’s and smiled amiably. A hologram appeared over one of the empty seats, outlining a dark volume into which part of an alien, gilled face drifted off center. Belisarius half-expected one of the Bank officials to speak first, as if this were their meeting. He didn’t expect that Bank analysts put too much faith in the Union rebellion. He wouldn’t have. And yet, here the Banks sat, waiting for the diminutive general of a tiny nation to speak. Rudo’s eyes moved from face to face and she gradually constructed on her own a tight smile, straining at humor.

马纳夫瓦是巴赫维齐星系两颗气态巨行星中最内侧的一颗。贝利撒留斯在三十万公里之下观察着它半透明的蓝色甲烷云。它们平静地转动着。马纳夫瓦炙热的内核把整个大气层搅成对流单元，把一切都混合得近乎无影无踪。当贝利萨留斯调整他的增强眼睛捕捉红外线和紫外线时，风流以模糊的笔触出现，汇聚到南极双风暴系统上。美极了。自组织。合乎逻辑。

马纳夫瓦捕捉到了几十颗卫星，其中四颗是直径达几十公里的大型铁镍块。在远处，他的望远镜可以看到最近的卫星上的太阳能采矿和冶炼作业。在月球轨道周围，新的造船厂、工厂和轨道防御工事正在如火如荼地建设中。

鲁道将军在这里设立了军事总部，而不是在巴赫韦齐首都或其月球栖息地基塔拉。马纳夫瓦船厂不需要鲁多在这里，所以贝利撒留斯猜测，她把总部设在这里是因为持续存在的暗杀危险。

卡珊德拉漂浮到贝利萨留斯手臂附近时，当地的磁场发生了变化。当他的视觉感官恢复正常时，她看着下面流畅的动态艺术。虚假的色彩褪去了。风暴融化在甲烷雾霾中。房间里的声音也发生了变化。声音冲击着他构建的脆弱而暂时的宁静： 英式西班牙语、零星的绍纳语，还有在第六远征军与世隔绝的四十年里演变出来的奇怪的法语 8.3 方言。话音刚落，他便转身面向房间。鲁道将军跟在她的保镖后面飘了进来。其他一些客人也开始陆续入座。

两位傀儡代表盖茨-15 和罗莎莉-约翰斯-10 与一位小个子主教挤在一起，贝利撒留斯曾多次在自由之城格拉西-6 的新闻中看到过这位主教。罗莎莉曾是他的朋友，她鬼鬼祟祟地看着他。她不可能再是他的朋友了。三位银行代表形成了一个类似的集群，他们的外部人工智能和感官增强技术在棕色皮肤上闪闪发光。贝利撒留斯通过他的电斑，感受到电磁中微弱发出的柔和的计算白噪声。伊坎吉卡跟在鲁多身后走进舱房，她的目光以中性的评价扫视着与会者，没有在贝利撒留斯身上多停留，尽管他看到她的视线扫描到了他手腕上戴着圣马修的服务带。

鲁多在房间里转了一圈，向每一位来宾问好。一位来自巴赫韦齐的政治家紧随其后，与大家握手。据介绍，他是鲁多的内阁同事、外交部长阿库福。在被介绍给卡珊德拉和圣马修之前，鲁多对贝里萨留斯露出了最勉强的笑容。当她来到银行代表面前时，介绍的是四位而不是三位。他们显然携带了一个人工智能，一个重要到足以作为一个人来介绍的人工智能。她坐在桌前。自从贝利撒瑞斯上次见到鲁道后的几个月里，她变老了。这位六十二岁的老太太现在看起来和她的年龄相仿，黑发变成了白发，皱纹深深地刻在黝黑的皮肤上，她的表情更加庄重和威严。他过去见过的那个不确定的、过度补偿的 22 岁女人，那个命令他挨打的女人，也在那里，但掺杂了一些更实质的东西。

贝利萨留斯在银行代表的对面，罗莎莉旁边找了个位置坐下。外交部长坐在卡珊德拉旁边的座位上，面带微笑。在其中一个空座位上出现了一个全息图像，勾勒出一个黑暗的空间，里面有一张长满鳃的异形脸的一部分偏离了中心。贝利撒留斯半信半疑地期待着银行的一位官员首先发言，就好像这是他们的会议一样。他没想到银行的分析家们对联盟的叛乱太有信心了。他不会这么想的。然而，班克斯就坐在这里，等着一个小国的矮小将军发言。鲁多的目光从一个人的脸上移到另一个人的脸上，她逐渐挤出一丝笑容，努力表现出幽默感。

“Common enemies make for strange... acquaintances.” she said.

Belisarius eyed the Bank officials. Gillbard carried an admiral’s rank and seemed to be the highest-ranking one, but Luisa Pacheco, some flavor of technical advisor, spoke first.

“The Banks of the Anglo-Spanish Plutocracy see themselves as interested parties, General,” she said, “and have empowered the four of us to discuss economic, military and political implications with great frankness.”

“I am similarly empowered by the Episcopal Conclave of the Theocracy,” the Puppet bishop said, thrusting out his jaw. A strap under his chin kept his mitre from floating away. Rudo maintained her precise smile and then looked to Belisarius.

“The Homo quantus came for information,” Cassandra said.

“Hopefully there’s more than information in the conversation,” Rudo said. “The Homo quantus pose a threat to all of us.”

Belisarius would have objected, but no one would believe him. The legend of the Homo quantus had obviously grown large. Attempting to turn the attention away, Belisarius gestured to Stills.

“Don’t look at me,” Stills said in his mechanical monotone. “The mongrels don’t got an economy, politics or a military.” The tone his translator inserted into his voice suggested he wasn’t finished. The table waited as his dark fish face left the camera view and his blubbery arm came into view, a single finger extended.

“Of common interest is the weaponization of the Homo quantus by the Congregate,” Rudo said. “Some mix of genetic and electronic augments are flying combat missions. We don’t know if Homo quantus assets have been deployed to other uses by the Congregate, but their presence in a theatre of war poses a risk we can’t yet quantify.”

The general’s look went to the Bank officials rather than Belisarius and Cassandra.

“The Homo quantus were never meant to be front-line combatants,” Pacheco said. “The project designed them to be strategists, tacticians and forecasters. Our first concern is assuring the safety of the other Homo quantus and the immediate end of Congregate violations of our licences and patents, ideally by the rescue of the captive Homo quantus.”

That was very interesting. A rescue. If the Banks moved directly against the Congregate, it might force even the other patron nations to choose sides. There had never been a real war between the patrons; their cold war smouldered in small flames here and there, in plausibly deniable skirmishes and client nation proxy battles.

“Failing that?” Iekanjika said.

Pacheco made a gesture of indecision.

“For less ideal circumstances, there are less ideal solutions,” Admiral Gillbard said.

“We don’t know where the captive Homo quantus are,” Belisarius said.

“They’re being held at one of the Ministry of Intelligence globes in the clouds of Venus,” Gillbard said.

Cassandra met Belisarius’ eyes, but there was no hope in them; her expression mirrored his inner turmoil. Despite all that she’d said about blame and choices, his choices had hurt his people. He’d brought suffering to them.

“We have more details,” the admiral said, “but they would need to be revealed in a smaller meeting.” None of the Bank representatives looked at the Puppets, although Gillbard might have meant Stills.

“We’re part of this,” Grassie-6 said. “We have more than a stake. The Congregate will regret making enemies of the Puppets.”

Iekanjika quirked an eyebrow. Belisarius didn’t know Iekanjika to ever waste time. He didn’t understand why the Puppets might be here. On the surface, they had nothing to offer the Union, or anyone.

“How do you hope this matters to the table?” Gillbard said.

“We’re going to send a Puppet assault force to Venus, to rescue a person of great importance to us,” Grassie-6 said without a hint of irony or doubt. “Antonio Del Casal, a genetic engineer, was helping us address serious medical concerns in the Puppet theocracies. Congregate agents stole him from the Free City.”

“We saw the Congregate take the geneticist,” the third Bank official said, the Teixiera woman, “although at the time we didn’t know his identity or significance. Since then, Bank intelligence operatives in the Venusian cloud cities have co-located Del Casal with the Homo quantus. He’s an extraordinary geneticist.”

“她说："共同的敌人造就了奇怪的......熟人。

贝利撒留斯注视着银行的官员们。吉尔巴德拥有海军上将军衔，似乎是级别最高的一位，但路易莎-帕切科（Luisa Pacheco）作为某种技术顾问首先发言。

“英西财阀银行将自己视为利益相关方，将军，“她说，”并授权我们四人可以非常坦诚地讨论经济、军事和政治影响。”

“我也同样得到了神权主教团的授权。"傀儡主教伸出下巴说。他下巴下的一根带子防止他的头巾飘走。鲁多保持着精准的微笑，然后看向贝里萨留斯。

“卡珊德拉说："智人是来打探消息的。

“希望谈话中不止是信息，"鲁道说。“智人对我们所有人都构成了威胁。”

贝利撒留斯本想反对，但没人会相信他。显然，智人的传说已经越传越广。为了转移视线，贝利撒留斯向斯蒂尔斯做了个手势。

“别看我，"斯蒂尔斯用他那机械的单音说道。“杂种们没有经济、政治和军事。” 他的翻译插入的语气表明他还没说完。当他那张黝黑的鱼脸离开摄像机视角，他那胖乎乎的手臂出现在视野中，伸出一根手指时，桌子上的人都在等待。

“鲁道说："我们共同感兴趣的是，会聚体将智人武器化。“一些基因和电子增强器的混合体正在执行战斗任务。我们不知道智人资产是否已被公会部署到其他用途，但它们在战场上的存在构成了我们尚无法量化的风险。”

将军的目光投向了银行官员，而不是贝利萨留斯和卡珊德拉。

“帕切科说："智人从未想过要成为前线战斗员。“这个项目把他们设计成战略家、战术家和预测家。我们的首要任务是确保其他智人的安全，并立即制止公理会侵犯我们的许可证和专利权的行为，最好是营救被俘虏的智人。”

这很有意思。拯救 如果银行直接对公会采取行动，甚至会迫使其他赞助国选择阵营。赞助国之间从未有过真正的战争；他们的冷战在这里和那里，在似是而非的小规模冲突和客户国的代理战争中，小规模地燃烧着。

“失败了吗？伊坎吉卡说。

帕切科做了一个犹豫不决的手势。

“吉尔巴德上将说："对于不太理想的情况，也有不太理想的解决办法。

“我们不知道被俘虏的智人在哪里，"贝利撒留斯说。

“他们被关押在金星云层中的一个情报部球体里。"吉尔巴德说。

卡珊德拉对上了贝利撒留斯的眼睛，但她的眼中没有一丝希望；她的表情反映了他内心的不安。尽管她说了那么多关于责备和选择的话，他的选择还是伤害了他的人民。他给他们带来了痛苦。

“我们有更多的细节，“海军上将说，”但需要在一个较小的会议上透露。” 银行的代表们都没有看傀儡们，尽管吉尔巴德可能指的是斯蒂尔斯。

“我们也有份。"格拉西-6 说。“我们不仅仅是利益相关者。公会会后悔与傀儡为敌的。”

伊坎吉卡挑了挑眉毛。贝利撒瑞斯不知道伊坎吉卡会浪费时间。他不明白傀儡们为什么会出现在这里。从表面上看，他们对联盟或任何人都没什么好处。

“你希望这对谈判桌有什么意义？” 吉尔巴德说。

“我们要向金星派遣一支傀儡突击队，去营救一个对我们来说非常重要的人。"格拉西-6号不无讽刺或怀疑地说。“安东尼奥-德尔-卡萨尔是一名基因工程师，他正在帮助我们解决傀儡神权国的严重医疗问题。公理会特工把他从自由城偷走了。”

“我们亲眼看到公理会带走了这位遗传学家，“银行的第三位官员，也就是那位叫特谢拉的女士说，”尽管当时我们并不知道他的身份和重要性。从那时起，银行在金星云端城市的情报人员就把德尔卡萨尔和量子智人放在了一起。他是一位非凡的遗传学家。

“Extraordinary enough to try to reverse engineer the Homo quantus, perhaps,” Gillbard said.

“He’s starting from scratch?” Rudo said.

“We fled with the Homo quantus in a hurry. There was no time to erase the backups,” Belisarius said. “And to get Del Casal to help us, I offered him a chance to look at my biology.”

“And because you violated your NDA around your IP, he may have a chance to provide assistance to the Congregate,” Gillbard said angrily.

“I’m not IP,” Belisarius said. “This is my body.”

“You have a poor understanding of the law,” Pacheco said.

“None of the captured Homo quantus are capable of entering the fugue,” Cassandra said.

“Could he fix them?” Iekanjika said. “Could he make those Homo quantus fully functional?”

“The resources of the Homo quantus project couldn’t,” Belisarius said.

“The project ran within some ethical guidelines,” Teixiera said with a disturbing silkiness in her voice “And the project wasn’t rushing to product with manuals and prototypes in front of them.”

“The Congregate are strongly resistant to genetic engineering,” Rudo said.

“With respect, General,” Gillbard said, “they were until you took away the Freya Axis. Their House names have changed. They’ve lowered the ensign of the House of Saints and raised the standard of the House of Styx for the first time in sixty years. Their wartime criminal, security and civil codes now apply.”

“Our own autopsies of Homo quantus pilots were revealing,” Teixiera said, her long fingers stroking her jawline.

“How many have they killed?” Cassandra demanded.

“The Congregate aren’t relying strictly on genetic engineering,” the risk analyst said. “They’re using our AI tech and internal nano-wiring to supplement the neurological pieces that aren’t functional.”

“AIs?” Belisarius said, looking with a queasy horror at the bulbous metallic lumps growing out of the heads of both Gillbard and Pacheco. His feelings were illogical. He’d been wired and built and designed as much as they, probably more, but all of the changes to Belisarius and Cassandra and the Homo quantus were biological.

“You think they’re achieving the fugue by supplementing with AIs?” Belisarius said.

“We don’t know what they’re achieving,” Gillbard said. “The Homo quantus aren’t the only path we’ve been investing in to develop superior perceptions in humanity. We know you’re carrying a prototype of ours, Mister Arjona.”

Belisarius kept his eyes on the Bank admiral, but his hand brushed the service band. After a moment, the hologram of Saint Matthew appeared, rendered in the scultped limestone style of pre-contact Mayan.

“He chose to leave,” Belisarius said.

“That’s not something he can choose,” the admiral said, “nor is it something you can possess, under Plutocracy law, but everything is negotiable.”

“No one possesses me,” Saint Matthew said.

“Our primary concern for the rest of the Homo quantus is their safety” Gillbard said. “We have the resources to set up a new Garret almost anywhere you want, with all the resources you want, so that you can return to lives of study and peace. Even your... Saint Matthew can negotiate new licensing terms.”

Beside Gillbard’s head, on the side where the chrome-reflective dome emerged, a hologram appeared, lit only in yellow light, its features those of a hairless, androgynous human head.

“That’s your new general artificial intelligence,” Belisarius said.

“Yes, the Aleph Class AI, like your AI but without the instabilities,” Gillbard said “and integrable with human neurology. We can lease you one if you want. Yours is clearly broken.”

“No thank you,” Belisarius said.

Gillbard’s shrug was insouciant. He and the AI holographic face looked to Rudo, but she gave no encouragement. Iekanjika had already shown herself to be wary of Saint Matthew’s capabilities. A hungering Bank AI wouldn’t get a warmer welcome.

Teixiera still watched Belisarius and Cassandra. “We’ve been running projections since the break-out of the Puppet Axis,” the risk analyst said. “No model has shown the Congregate ever relenting in their pursuit of the Homo quantus. They can’t afford to, given your role in all of this. We’re responsible for the Homo quantus and we’ll protect you, but that needs to start soon. We’re massing Bank naval forces in Epsilon Indi, but so is the Congregate. We can pick up the hidden Homo quantus and we can fend off anti-matter warheads, but we can’t do both for long, and doing it at the same time is risky.”

“We’re safe,” Cassandra said. “We’re concerned about the Homo quantus in captivity.”

“The problems are related,” Grassie-6 said in his clumsy Anglo-Spanish. He switched to his native Anglo patois. “Antonio Del Casal needs to be safely among the Puppets. We will protect him and keep him from ever falling into the clutches of the Congregate.”

“You couldn’t this time,” Pacheco said dryly.

“非凡到足以尝试逆向工程智人，也许，"吉尔巴德说。

“他要从头开始？” 鲁道说。

“我们带着智人量子仓皇出逃。没有时间删除备份，"贝利撒留斯说。“为了让德尔-卡萨尔帮助我们，我给了他一个研究我的生物学的机会。”

“因为你违反了你的知识产权保密协议，所以他可能有机会向公会提供帮助。"吉尔巴德愤怒地说。

“我不是知识产权。"贝利撒留斯说。“这是我的身体。”

“你对法律的理解太差了。"帕切科说。

“被俘虏的智人都无法进入赋格状态。"卡珊德拉说。

“他能治好他们吗？” 伊坎吉卡说。“他能让那些智人量子完全发挥作用吗？”

“智人量子项目的资源无法做到。"贝利萨留斯说。

“这个项目是在一些道德准则的范围内运行的，“特克谢拉的声音里带着令人不安的丝丝不安，”而且，这个项目并不是拿着手册和原型就急着出产品的。”

“刚果人强烈抵制基因工程。"鲁多说。

“恕我直言，将军，“吉尔巴德说，”在你拿走弗莱亚轴心之前，他们一直是这样。他们的家族名称已经改变。他们降下了圣徒家族的旗帜，六十年来第一次提高了冥河家族的标准。他们的战时刑法、安全法和民法现在都适用。”

“我们自己对智人机师的尸检结果很有启发。"特谢拉说，她修长的手指抚摸着自己的下颚。

“他们杀了多少人？” 卡珊德拉问道。

“会聚者并不完全依赖基因工程，"风险分析师说。“他们正在利用我们的人工智能技术和内部纳米线路来补充那些功能缺失的神经部分。”

“人工智能？贝利撒留斯说，他惊恐地看着吉尔巴德和帕切科头上长出的圆鼓鼓的金属块。他的感觉不合逻辑。他和他们一样，都经过了线路连接、制造和设计，也许更多，但贝利撒留斯、卡珊德拉和量子智人的所有变化都是生物性的。

“你认为他们是通过人工智能来实现迷幻的？” 贝利撒留斯说。

“我们不知道他们在实现什么。"吉尔巴德说。“智人（Homo quantus）并不是我们投资开发人类卓越感知的唯一途径。我们知道你携带着我们的原型机，阿尔霍纳先生。”

贝利萨留斯的眼睛一直盯着银行上将，但他的手拂过了服务带。过了一会儿，圣马修的全息图像出现了，以接触前玛雅人的石灰岩雕刻风格呈现。

“他选择了离开，"贝利萨留斯说。

“这不是他能选择的，“海军上将说，”根据普鲁托法律，这也不是你能占有的，但一切都是可以商量的。”

“没人能占有我。"圣马修说。

“我们最关心的是其他智人的安全。"吉尔巴德说。“我们有足够的资源，几乎可以在你们想要的任何地方建立一个新的加勒特，提供你们想要的一切资源，让你们重新过上学习和平静的生活。甚至你们的 圣马修都能谈妥新的许可条款。”

在吉尔巴德的头旁边，在铬反光穹顶出现的一侧，出现了一个全息图像，只有黄色的光，它的特征是一个没有头发、雌雄同体的人头。

“这就是你们的新通用人工智能。"贝利萨留斯说。

“是的，阿莱夫级人工智能，就像你们的人工智能，但没有不稳定因素，“吉尔巴德说，”而且可以与人类神经系统整合。如果你需要，我们可以租给你一个。你的显然已经坏了。”

“不用了，谢谢。"贝利撒留斯说。

吉尔巴德无所谓地耸了耸肩。他和人工智能全息面孔都看向鲁道，但她没有给予任何鼓励。伊坎吉卡已经表现出对圣马修能力的警惕。一个饥肠辘辘的人工智能银行不会受到更热烈的欢迎。

特谢拉仍然注视着贝利萨留斯和卡珊德拉。“自傀儡轴心爆发以来，我们一直在进行预测，"风险分析师说。“没有任何一个模型显示，公会在追捕智人的过程中有所松懈。考虑到你们在这一切中的作用，他们不能松懈。我们要对智人负责，我们会保护你们，但这需要尽快开始。我们正在伊普西隆印第集结银行的海军力量 但聚集地也在集结海军力量 我们可以找到隐藏的智人 量子星人，我们也可以抵御反物质弹头 但我们不能长久地同时做到这两点 同时做到这两点是有风险的。”

“我们很安全。"卡桑德拉说。“我们担心的是圈养的智人。”

“问题是相关的，"格拉西-6 用他笨拙的盎格鲁西班牙语说。他又换成了他的母语盎格鲁土语。“安东尼奥-德尔卡萨尔需要安全地待在傀儡中。我们会保护他，不让他落入会党的魔掌。”

“这次你们不能了。"帕切科干巴巴地说。

The little bishop’s pink cheeks flushed in blotches. “Had we known he was a target of the Congregate, he would have been as secure as the divine themselves. We know how to protect what’s ours. Their interest in him came without warning.”

Teixiera’s expression shifted, the geometry of the scarlet tattoo lines on her bare scalp and forehead became eloquently dubious.

“Puppet troopers are willing to break Del Casal out of wherever he is in the clouds of Venus,” Grassie-6 said, pointing at Iekanjika emphatically. “That will stop part of your problem.”

Cassandra leaned around Belisarius to look at the bishop. “In your rickety ships? Against Congregate dreadnoughts?”

“I wouldn’t gamble on the Puppet navy,” Belisarius said, “and under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t bet on the typical Puppet, but when they sense some danger to the Numen, Puppet troopers can be vicious.”

“We’re prepared to send in a war Numen,” Grassie-6 said.

Cassandra was about to ask, but Belisarius signalled her to wait with the faintest of electrical discharges from his fingertips. She wouldn’t like the answer and whatever the Puppet plan, it wasn’t the rate limiting step.

“It doesn’t matter that the problems are related or not,” Belisarius said to the Puppets. “Venus is Venus. It’s more fortified than any Axis. The bulk of the planet and the immensity of atmosphere not only shield it from covert entry, but we literally have no way to know where anything is. It doesn’t have a fixed geography. Like every other part of Venus, the Ministry of Intelligence follows the winds. We wouldn’t even know which altitude to begin searching for it.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Gillbard said. “We have, with extreme difficulty, placed some agents within Venusian society. We know where the Ministry of Intelligence globes are.”

“Are you able to move weapons through customs?” Belisarius said. “Can you get drones through the defense net? Are you able to get warships into any orbit? It not, this conversation is academic.”

“No one thought anyone could get the Sixth Expeditionary Force through the Puppet Axis,” Rudo said. “And yet...”

“I lived in the Puppet Free City for years. I knew the Puppets, their passions, their blind spots.”

“Are you saying the Congregate has none of these things?” Rudo said.

“We’re not dealing with a wormhole with public access,” Belisarius said. “A Ministry of Intelligence globe is a fortification. None of the Homo quantus, even me, were ever successful military analysts.”

“We didn’t hire a military strategist to get the Expeditionary Force across the Puppet Axis,” Rudo said. “We hired a con man. A magician. Your people need your magic as much as mine do.”

“Nothing but the Plutocracy’s entry into the war will be any help to you,” Belisarius said. “If you’re not clear on that, you’re in trouble. Cut a deal with the Banks and save yourselves.”

“We didn’t come through all of this to trade one yoke for another,” Rudo said.

“Neither did we,” Cassandra said.

“The captive Homo quantus are not the only ones paying for your freedom, Arjona,” Gillbard said. “The Union will pay and the shareholders of the Banks will pay when the Congregate perfects its own Homo quantus technology.”

Belisarius unstrapped himself from his seat.

“The Banks made the Homo quantus to do exactly what they’re doing,” Belisarius said. “The Banks made hard AIs as weapons. It sounds to me like you’re reaping what you sowed.”

小主教粉嫩的脸颊泛起了红晕。“如果我们知道他是圣会的目标，他就会像神灵一样安全。我们知道如何保护自己的东西。他们对他的兴趣来得毫无征兆。”

特谢拉的表情发生了变化，裸露的头皮和额头上猩红色纹身线的几何形状变得雄辩而可疑。

“傀儡部队愿意把德尔-卡萨尔从金星云层的任何地方解救出来。"格拉西-6 指着伊坎吉卡强调说。“这样就能解决你的部分问题。”

卡珊德拉绕过贝利萨留斯，看着主教。“用你们摇摇欲坠的战舰？对付公会无畏舰？”

“我不会在傀儡海军身上下赌注，“贝利撒留斯说，”在正常情况下，我也不会在典型的傀儡身上下赌注，但当他们感觉到努曼人面临某种危险时，傀儡部队就会穷凶极恶。”

“我们准备派出一支战争努曼人。"格拉西-6 说。

卡珊德拉正要问，但贝利萨留斯用指尖微弱的放电示意她等一等。她不会喜欢这个答案，不管傀儡计划如何，这都不是限制速度的一步。

“问题是否相关并不重要，"贝利撒瑞斯对傀儡们说。“金星就是金星。它比任何轴心国都要坚固。金星的体积和庞大的大气层不仅使它无法秘密进入，而且我们根本无法知道任何东西在哪里。它没有固定的地理位置。和金星的其他地方一样，情报部也是随风而动。我们甚至不知道从哪个高度开始寻找它。”

“这不完全正确，"吉尔巴德说。“我们好不容易在金星社会中安插了一些特工。我们知道情报部的地球仪在哪里。”

“你们能通过海关运送武器吗？” 贝利撒留斯说。“你们能让无人机通过防御网吗？你们能让战舰进入任何轨道吗？如果不能，这次谈话就是学术性的。”

“没人认为有人能让第六远征军通过傀儡轴心。"鲁道说。“然而......”

“我在傀儡自由城生活了多年。我了解傀儡，了解他们的热情，了解他们的盲点。”

“你是说公会没有这些东西？” 鲁道说。

“我们面对的不是一个可以公开进入的虫洞。"贝利萨留斯说。“情报部的地球仪是一种防御工事。没有一个智人，即使是我，曾经是成功的军事分析师。”

“我们没有雇佣一个军事战略家来让远征军穿越傀儡轴心。"鲁道说。“我们雇了一个骗子。一个魔术师。你的人民和我的人民一样需要你的魔法。”

“除了财阀参战之外，什么都帮不了你们。"贝利撒留斯说。“如果你不清楚这一点，你就有麻烦了。和银行达成协议，拯救你们自己吧。”

“我们经历这一切，不是为了用一个枷锁换另一个枷锁。"鲁道说。

“我们也不是。"卡桑德拉说。

“为你们的自由付出代价的不仅仅是被俘虏的智人，阿尔霍纳。"吉尔巴德说。“当公理会完善自己的智人量子技术时，联盟会付出代价，银行的股东们也会付出代价。”

贝利撒留斯从座位上站了起来。

“银行制造智人量子，正是为了做他们正在做的事情。"贝利撒留斯说。“班克斯制造了硬人工智能作为武器。在我看来，你们是自食其果。”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Trial of Timmy Hill-9

Parish Notes

Timothy Hill-9 was borned into the Hill family in Hill Town, and was immunologically compatible with both the Hill and Carter families. At age twelve, Timmy started his puberty with the right symptoms. On testing, I found he properly saw, felt and smelled the Numen of Hill Town (Cindy Hill, Bethany Hill, Roger Hill, and Samantha Hill, hallowed be their names, I love you) with no special features. Timmy was entered into normal schooling to be a welder. At fourteen, Timmy was brain-chipped with a normal worker one and at fifteen, Timmy began to see visions. I conducted standard scriptural tests for vision orthodoxy (the Blackmore test, the Triple Color test, and the Hose test, but not strapping). Timmy’s visions were unconsistent to the canon, even after deepish searches into the The Book of Unverified Notes. Timmy was punished according to The Book of Assessments and put into corrective school. Timmy kept having visions, abstract images with nothing to do with the Numen. His chip was removed and destroyed and a new one put in, but the visions didn’t stop. At age seventeen, following procedures in the Book of Assessments, Timmy was tried for thinking of heresy and nonsense, and sentenced to death by stoning. A small stoning festival was set up. Cindy Hill and Roger Hill, hallowed be their names, I love you, were wheeled out so it was a wonderful day.

Dennis Hill-3, Priest

Parish of Hill Town

提米-希尔的审判-9

教区笔记

蒂莫西-希尔-9 出生在希尔镇的希尔家族，与希尔家族和卡特家族都有免疫相容性。12 岁时，提米开始出现青春期症状。经过测试，我发现他能正确地看到、感觉到和闻到希尔镇的努门人（辛迪-希尔、贝瑟妮-希尔、罗杰-希尔和萨曼莎-希尔，他们的名字神圣不可侵犯，我爱你），没有任何特别之处。提米进入普通学校学习，成为一名焊接工。14 岁时，提米的大脑被植入了一个正常工人的芯片，15 岁时，提米开始出现幻觉。我进行了标准的视力正统性圣经测试（布莱克摩尔测试、三色测试和软管测试，但不包括捆绑测试）。即使深入研究了《未经证实的注释之书》，提米的幻觉也与正典不符。根据《评估手册》，提米受到了惩罚，并被送进了矫正学校。提米不断出现幻觉，都是与努门无关的抽象图像。他的芯片被取出并销毁，又换上了新的芯片，但幻象并没有停止。17 岁那年，按照《评估手册》中的程序，提米因思想异端和胡言乱语而受到审判，并被判处石刑。一个小型的石刑节成立了。辛迪-希尔和罗杰-希尔（他们的名字神圣不可侵犯，我爱你）被推了出来，这真是美好的一天。

丹尼斯-希尔-3，牧师

希尔镇教区

Rosalie Johns-10 floated in the back cabin of the Puppet warship All the Blackmores Punch Hard. Although the cabin was pressurized, she wore her vacuum suit. This was a special communion for her, so none of the other envious Puppets around her would be allowed to smell His Holiness Lester. The War Numen was safe and secure and really strong inside his battle cage and hidden by the curtains behind the shock-proof glass. A frisson of anticipation tickled up her spine.

Bishop Grassie-6 attached the hose to her helmet. She already breathed deep and heavy in anticipation. Her bodyguard Jill floated near and watched Rosie’s face with eager trepidation. Jimbo had somehow squirmed just behind Jill and steadied himself by holding onto her shoulders. He watched Rosie’s face with fearless envy. Idiot.

Rosie’s visions were getting stronger. Her visions had been tested multiple times and had been the subject of a study during her time in the seminary. A couple of times she’d come close to being kicked out of the seminary or to being tried for them, but some of the bishops, Grassie-6 included, had been waiting to see what came of her visions. Until she was convicted of heresy or nonsense, the Puppet warriors and troopers treated her as a sort of religious talisman, a priest with one eye seeing another world.

There were no Numen in her visions, no odor of the immaculate, no feeling of the consecrated, and that was the problem. By definition, visions without the holy were profane, false images and knowledges meant to draw the faithful away from the Numen and into the absence. Some of the examining bishops wondered if she might be seeing the souls of the Numen. Others thought the nature of the Puppet Axis was being revealed to her, although her drawings didn’t mean anything to anyone. Some of the doctors looked to see if she had an enzyme or neurotransmitter loose somewhere. And until told not to, the watching Puppets thought she was special, possibly oracular, hopefully lucky, probably not heretical.

Bishop Grassie-6 turned the spigot and air flowed through the two channels of the hose. Stale, hot air began to fill her helmet, rich with the scent of old sweat and unwashed body, laced with the tang of urine and the pungent rankness of feces. Air from her own helmet and suit pumped outward, to the Numen’s War Cage. She and she alone shared air now with His Holiness Lester.

She sighed as a feeling of overwhelming connection stole over her, a contact with something larger than herself. She shrank to insignificance in the face of an immense, cosmic truth. At the same time, she grew large and important, because she was connected to it, through Lester, blessed be his name. She may have released a groan of spiritual satisfaction, a kind of sacred ecstasy. She controlled her journey though. She could think in this connected world in ways other Puppets could not. The tide of divinity sometimes just swept the workers, the warriors and the servants away, but priests could hold against it to find new truths. Jimbo slapped his hands excitedly on Jill’s shoulders, beside himself just from seeing Rosie’s communion.

Rosie’s eyes widened, painfully, with unblinking dryness as the powerful, beautiful taste of the Numen pulled her along in an alien dreamscape. The colors were wrong, nonsensical. Light didn’t shine into her eyes; it was already inside them, behind tightly squeezed lids. Pale greens shifted to somber reds or watery blues, switching from second to second, struggling to emerge from a gray mist. Shapes hid in that mist, like great lumbering animals, but seen only through impressions. They weren’t really animals. She knew from other dream trips with the Numen that her thoughts made patterns. Oracular priests received something too large and sublime to understand, so the Puppets translated it down to something they could hold onto, like holding on to just a snippet of a song.

There was so much to apprehend, but her arms were too small, her mind too humble. And the world squeezed her. A claustrophobia made her heart thump, as it had when tied up as a child for training, when it was so tight it was hard to breathe. She didn’t panic, because she knew the knots were as tight as they needed to be to teach little Rosie a lesson. She didn’t panic because little Rosie had known that she could be the Good Boy. But there was something in the grayness; looking upon it stoked up fleeting, alien fears.

罗莎莉-约翰斯-10 漂浮在 “傀儡战舰 ”的后舱里。虽然船舱是加压的，但她还是穿上了真空服。这对她来说是一次特殊的圣餐，所以她周围其他羡慕的傀儡都不能闻到莱斯特教皇的气味。战神努曼在他的战斗笼子里安全无忧，而且真的很强大，被防震玻璃后面的窗帘遮挡住了。她的脊背上痒痒的，一阵期待。

格拉西-6 主教将软管连接到头盔上。她已经在期待中深深地喘着粗气。她的保镖吉尔漂浮在附近，焦急而惶恐地注视着罗西的脸。金博不知何时已经爬到了吉尔的身后，扶着她的肩膀稳住了身体。他看着罗西的脸，心中充满了无畏的羡慕。傻瓜。

罗西的幻觉越来越强烈了。在神学院学习期间，她的幻觉曾多次接受测试，并成为一项研究课题。有几次她差点被踢出神学院或因此受审，但一些主教，包括格拉西六世，一直在等着看她的幻觉会有什么结果。在她被判定为异端或无稽之谈之前，傀儡战士和士兵们都把她当作一种宗教护身符，一个用一只眼睛看到另一个世界的牧师。

她的幻象中没有 Numen，没有圣洁的气味，没有神圣的感觉，这就是问题所在。顾名思义，没有圣洁的幻象是亵渎，是虚假的图像和知识，目的是把信徒从努门引向虚无。一些审查主教怀疑她是否看到了努曼人的灵魂。其他人则认为，傀儡轴心的本质正在向她揭示，尽管她的图画对任何人都没有任何意义。一些医生想看看她是否体内的酶或神经递质松动了。在被告知不要这样做之前，观看的傀儡们认为她很特别，可能有神通，希望她是幸运的，但可能不是异端。

格拉西-6 主教拧开水龙头，空气从软管的两个通道中流出。陈腐的热空气开始灌入她的头盔，其中弥漫着陈年汗水和未清洗身体的气味，还夹杂着尿液的味道和粪便刺鼻的味道。空气从她自己的头盔和战衣中抽出，流向努曼人的 “战争牢笼”。现在，只有她和莱斯特教皇共享空气。

她叹了口气，一种压倒性的联系感笼罩着她，一种与比她自己更大的东西的接触。在巨大的宇宙真理面前，她变得微不足道。同时，她也变得高大而重要，因为她通过莱斯特（愿上帝保佑他的名字）与之相连。她可能发出了精神满足的呻吟，一种神圣的狂喜。不过，她控制着自己的旅程。她能以其他傀儡无法做到的方式在这个相连的世界里思考。神性的浪潮有时会把工人、战士和仆人卷走，但祭司却能抵挡住它，找到新的真理。金博兴奋地用手拍打着吉尔的肩膀，因为看到了罗茜的圣餐而激动不已。

罗西的眼睛睁得大大的，痛苦地、一眨不眨地干涩着，强大而美丽的努曼人的味道把她带入了一个陌生的梦境。颜色不对，毫无道理。光没有照进她的眼睛，而是已经照进了她的眼睛，在紧紧挤压的眼睑后面。淡淡的绿色转为阴郁的红色或水汪汪的蓝色，一秒一秒地切换，挣扎着从灰雾中浮现出来。形状隐藏在雾中，就像巨大的笨重的动物，但只能通过印象看到。它们并不是真正的动物。在与努曼人的其他梦境之旅中，她知道自己的思想创造了图案。神谕祭司接收到的东西过于庞大和崇高，他们无法理解，所以傀儡们将其转化为他们可以把握的东西，就像把握一首歌的片段一样。

要理解的东西太多了，但她的臂膀太小，她的心灵太卑微。世界挤压着她。幽闭恐惧症让她的心砰砰直跳，就像小时候被绑着训练时一样，紧得难以呼吸。她并没有惊慌失措，因为她知道，为了给小罗西一个教训，绳结打得再紧也是必要的。她没有惊慌失措，因为小罗西知道她可以成为好孩子。但是，灰暗中有些东西；看着它，激起了转瞬即逝的、异样的恐惧。

Puppets knew only one real fear: the absence, the unique Puppet terror of being away from the Numen. Others were just shadows of the absence. That was why this fear of being lost came to worm beneath her experience and confidence. It wasn’t a fear she knew how to handle. She translated it into her kind of fear, a fear of being in the absence and not being able to find her way back to divinity.

Shapes in the gray shadows, outlined in uncertain, stippled light, made no sense to her and she heard her own voice in her ears, her voice yelling into her helmet, saying nonsense. She opened her eyes. Jimbo cowered behind Jill, hugging her neck, staring wide-eyed at Rosie, no envy in his eyes at all. Cold, dry air blew into her helmet, flushing out the taste of Numen, but Lester permeated her body now, her soul, and would until the experience decayed. The visions weren’t going away. Even with open eyes she saw the shapes, the strange architecture overlaid on the inside of the bay of the war ship. And she cried because she didn’t know what it was happening to her and the idea of speaking heresy and nonsense terrified her as much as the visions.

傀儡们只知道一种真正的恐惧：缺席，傀儡们对离开 Numen 的独特恐惧。其他人只是缺失的影子。这就是为什么这种对迷失的恐惧会在她的经验和自信之下滋生。她不知道如何处理这种恐惧。她把这种恐惧转化成了自己的恐惧，一种身处缺失之中却找不到回归神性之路的恐惧。

灰色阴影中的形状，在不确定的斑驳光线下勾勒出的轮廓，对她来说毫无意义，她听到自己的声音在耳边响起，她的声音对着头盔大喊大叫，说着胡话。她睁开眼睛。吉伯缩在吉尔身后，搂着她的脖子，睁大眼睛盯着罗西，眼中没有丝毫羡慕。干冷的空气吹进她的头盔，冲淡了努曼的味道，但莱斯特现在已经渗透进她的身体和灵魂，而且会一直渗透下去，直到她的经历腐烂为止。幻觉并没有消失。即使睁开眼睛，她也能看到战舰舱内叠加的形状和奇怪的建筑。她哭了，因为她不知道自己身上发生了什么，而说出异端邪说和胡言乱语的想法让她感到害怕，就像那些幻象一样。

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Iekanjika had given her and Bel a small suite. The right angles and gray plastic walls of their suite here felt cramped and uninviting compared to the rolling hills they’d carved out of the ice of the Garret, but it was an improvement on the conditions in the freighters with the other Homo quantus refugees. She let herself feel those unpleasant thoughts, even a bit of guilt. In part she might owe it to the other Homo quantus as the mayor. She allowed the unpleasant feelings too in part because of Bel. He let himself or made himself feel all the guilt, earned or unearned, for what happened to the Homo quantus and the Hortus quantus. She still took some cues from him, but that had to stop. She’d learned so much since leaving the Garret, about the wide world, about herself, that she sometimes felt she was handling things better than Bel.

In the sleep sack next to her, he had a distant, thinking stare, as if disengaged from the here and now. She doubted he was thinking healthy thoughts like new theories of space-time geometry. Unseeing Homo quantus eyes could examine the past with perfect memory and every blink could flicker the torn bodies of Martín, Ana Teresa, and Edmer into view. Like a nightmare. More than enough reason not to blink.

The tearing of their bodies, by Stills’ pilots, by imbalanced accelerations and explosions and shrapnel felt like an accident, a downstream consequence of a far greater violence. Their bodies had been violated by wires, their skulls invaded by AIs, their pensive, pacifist personalities disengaged, like Bel’s eyes while he thought. It was like the Congregate engineers had illustrated a fully complete and self-consistent theory of bodily violations and it was hard to stop thinking about it. Her brain was very good at visualizing space-time configurations in four, six and even seven dimensions. The footpaths of electronic invasions in the corpses in three dimensions was so childishly easy that left on its own, her brain began to optimize design, finding more efficient ways for Congregate engineers to have enslaved her dead cousins.

Someone knocked at the door. She and Bel looked at one another questioningly and then began unzipping their sleep sacks.

“Should we be worried?” she whispered to Bel at the door.

“The Banks want us, but we’re worth more to them cooperating than not.”

“That’s not reassuring, Bel.”

The knocking sounded again, impatient. Cassandra unlocked it and pressed the release to slide it open. Two Puppets floated in the hallways, beyond the two Union MPs who’d been guarding their room. Coulibaly was there too, one of Iekanjika’s staff.

“The Puppets wanted to see you,” Coulibaly said. “The major-general didn’t know if you’d want to see them or not.”

Cassandra’s first reaction was just to close the door. She didn’t care about the mad wants of the Puppets, but the woman, Rosalie, had a look of hopefulness. The bishop was with her, with his tall green and gold hat.

“Rosalie,” Bel said. Cassandra didn’t know what emotion colored the way he said her name.

“Hi, boss,” she said with a tentative smile. “You, uh, you said to tell you if I ever had more of the dreams.”

“Come in, Rosalie,” he said. He paused one point one seconds, looking over the bishop. “Come in, Your Grace.”

Coulibaly appeared uncertain about something in the hallway.

“There isn’t much room in here, lieutenant,” Bel said, “but I imagine that you have orders.”

Coulibaly floated to the doorway and held herself pointedly there so that it didn’t close.

“What dreams, Rosie?” Bel said, smiling kindly.

The Puppet woman drew folded papers out of a suit pocket.

“You burned reaction mass on your way here to transport paper?” Cassandra asked.

“No one will intercept the transmission,” Bel said wryly.

“The Numen themselves enjoyed paper and pencil,” the bishop said, adjusting his hat. “We follow their example.”

“I like to draw,” Rosalie said.

伊坎吉卡给了她和贝尔一间小套房。与他们在加勒特冰层上凿出的连绵起伏的山丘相比，这里的直角和灰色塑料墙壁让他们感到拥挤和不舒服，但与其他智人难民在货船上的条件相比，这里已经有所改善了。她让自己感受到了这些不愉快的想法，甚至还有一点内疚。在某种程度上，她可能要感谢作为市长的其他智人。她允许自己有不愉快的感觉，部分原因也是因为贝尔。他让自己或让自己为发生在智人和霍特人身上的事感到所有的内疚，不管是应得的还是不应得的。她仍然从他那里得到一些暗示，但这必须停止。离开加勒特后，她学到了很多东西，关于这个广阔的世界，关于她自己，有时她觉得自己比贝尔处理得更好。

在她旁边的睡袋里，他的目光遥远，若有所思，仿佛与此时此地的生活格格不入。她怀疑他是不是在想时空几何的新理论之类的健康问题。看不见的智人眼睛能以完美的记忆审视过去，每一次眨眼都能让马丁、安娜-特雷莎和埃德莫被撕裂的身体闪现在眼前。就像一场噩梦。有足够的理由不眨眼。

斯蒂尔斯的飞行员、不平衡的加速度、爆炸和弹片撕裂了他们的身体，感觉就像一场意外，是更大暴力的下游后果。他们的身体被电线侵犯，他们的头颅被人工智能入侵，他们沉思的、和平主义的个性被剥离，就像贝尔思考时的眼睛一样。这就像会聚点的工程师们阐述了一个完全完整、自洽的身体侵犯理论，让人难以停止思考。她的大脑非常擅长将四维、六维甚至七维的时空配置形象化。在三维空间中，电子入侵尸体的路径是如此幼稚而简单，以至于她的大脑开始自行优化设计，为 “会聚 ”工程师奴役她死去的表亲找到更有效的方法。

有人敲门。她和贝尔疑惑地对视了一眼，然后开始拉开睡袋的拉链。

“我们应该担心吗？"她在门外低声问贝尔。

“班克斯想要我们，但我们合作比不合作更有价值。”

“这让人不放心，贝尔。”

敲门声再次响起，很不耐烦。卡珊德拉打开了门锁，然后按下开关将门推开。两个傀儡漂浮在走廊上，在守卫他们房间的两名联盟议员之外。库里巴利也在那里，他是伊坎吉卡的幕僚之一。

“傀儡们想见你。"库里巴利说。“少将不知道你是否想见他们”

卡珊德拉的第一反应只是把门关上。她并不关心傀儡们的疯狂要求，但那个叫罗莎莉的女人却露出了希望的神情。主教和她在一起，带着高高的金绿色帽子。

“罗莎莉，"贝尔说。卡珊德拉不知道他叫她名字的时候带着什么情绪。

“你好，老板。"她试探性地笑着说。“你，呃，你说过，如果我做了更多的梦，就告诉你。”

“进来吧，罗莎莉。"他说。他停顿了一点一秒，看着主教。“请进，主教大人。”

库里巴利似乎对走廊里的某些东西不确定。

“这里空间不大，中尉，“贝尔说，”但我想你是奉命行事。”

库里巴利飘到门口，指着门口，不让它关上。

“做什么梦呢，罗茜？” 贝尔和蔼地笑着说。

女傀儡从西装口袋里掏出折叠好的纸张。

“你在来这里运纸的路上烧掉了反应块？” 卡桑德拉问。

“没人会拦截传送。"贝尔狡黠地说。

“努曼人自己也喜欢纸和笔，"主教调整了一下帽子说。“我们以他们为榜样。”

“我喜欢画画。"罗莎莉说。

Cassandra didn’t chase the flaws in their reasoning. Rosalie unfolded the pages. The abstract drawings didn’t mean anything to her. She needed only a glimpse for her brain to render the images in her thoughts, giving a dimensionality absent in the lead lines on paper. She visualized in three, four, five dimensions, looking for patterns. Bel examined the papers, holding each one so that for a brief moment Cassandra could also see and memorize each. They were all drawings that looked vaguely similar to solutions to space-time structure theories that Cassandra had worked on, but ones that had no physical meaning, not representing anything that could really exist. But vaguely similar wasn’t enough. Homo quantus pattern recognition had been amplified so she had to be suspicious of similarities.

“What is this?” Cassandra said.

“Rosie has strange dreams sometimes,” Bel said, “since puberty.”

“That’s when I could first taste and smell divinity,” Rosalie added helpfully.

“All Puppets have dreams and nightmares,” Grassie-6 said. “The dreams of priests can be quite potent. Hers are different. Mister Arjona has looked at them before, but perhaps never with a tongue free to speak. We’re under far different conditions than when you lived in the Free City, Mister Arjona. Can you tell us what this is? Are the Numen giving us new technology through her dreams? Weapons? Propulsion? Induced wormhole tech? Maybe coordinates to other Axes?”

Bel gently folded the papers and pressed them into Rosalie’s hands.

“Are you able to send me the chip recordings?” Bel said.

The Puppet woman nodded and started manipulating a service band on her wrist before Cassandra realized what Bel was talking about.

“She has processing chips in her brain and you’re going to upload from her?” she demanded.

The Homo quantus couldn’t have chips in their skulls; they interfered with quantum coherence in the fugue, but each of them had a sophisticated innervated input jack on the outside of the skull. It had some storage space and theoretically, its algorithms could be infected with a virus. Bel held up his wrist and Saint Matthew’s service band.

“Saint Matthew can project the dreams so we can both see.”

Cassandra couldn’t name her misgivings, but no one else seemed wary. The little bishop gulped briefly at the air, a strange movement, before smiling at her and floating nearer.

“I believe that I should address you as Your Worship, shouldn’t I, Mayor Mejía?” he said.

“What do you want?”

“Although this meeting is unexpected, it may be an opportunity to advance bilateral issues,” he said, before looking pointedly at Lieutenant Coulibaly. “Or trilateral issues.”

“We don’t have any issues with the Puppets,” she said.

“As I understand more and more the interactions between the Reverend Johns-10 and Mister Arjona,” he said, “I see hidden commonalities between the Holy Puppets and the Homo quantus. Our people each have access to parts of the cosmos that are inaccessible to all other beings, and possibly insights to offer one another as we are doing right now. And at the very least, the Homo quantus obviously do not want to be under the thumb of the Congregate or the Banks. Through the Holy Axis, the Homo quantus could make a home at Port Stubbs, away from both powers.”

Cassandra didn’t know where to begin with her offended retort and before she could decide, a set of weird holographic images bloomed above the service band storing Saint Matthew. The abstract shape looked like some kind of multidimensional manifold, more complex than the Puppet woman had been able to put into her pencil drawings. It had a basic structure that Cassandra would have associated with space-time curvature. She’d studied the six-dimensional tesseract architecture of the Axes Mundi throats, and the temporary structures of induced wormholes; this looked to be of the same class of topologies, but she’d not seen its like before. It was incomplete. Her brain tried to interpolate the missing parts, to guess what kind of fields or forces this might describe.

“What is it?” Grassie-6 asked. “It’s important, isn’t it? A secret.”

卡桑德拉没有追问他们推理中的漏洞。罗莎莉展开书页。这些抽象画对她来说没有任何意义。她只需要瞥一眼，大脑就能呈现出她脑海中的图像，赋予纸上铅线所没有的立体感。她用三维、四维、五维来想象，寻找图案。贝尔端详着这些纸，拿着每一张纸，让卡珊德拉也能短暂地看到并记住每一张纸。它们都是卡珊德拉曾经研究过的时空结构理论的解决方案，看起来隐约相似，但没有任何物理意义，不代表任何真实存在的东西。但仅仅隐约相似是不够的。量子智人的模式识别能力已经被放大，所以她不得不对相似之处产生怀疑。

“这是什么？” 卡桑德拉说。

“罗西有时会做奇怪的梦，“贝尔说，”从青春期开始。”

“那是我第一次品尝和闻到神性的时候。"罗莎莉帮腔补充道。

“所有傀儡都会做梦和做噩梦，"格拉西-6 说。“牧师的梦境可能相当强烈。她的梦与众不同。阿尔霍纳先生以前也看过，但也许从来没有用舌头自由地说过。我们所处的环境与您在自由城时大不相同，阿尔霍纳先生。你能告诉我们这是什么吗？努曼人通过她的梦给了我们新技术吗？武器？推进器？诱导虫洞技术？也许是其他轴心的坐标？

贝尔轻轻叠好文件，把它们按在罗莎莉的手上。

“你能把芯片记录发给我吗？” 贝尔说。

女傀儡点点头，在卡珊德拉意识到贝尔在说什么之前，她开始操作手腕上的一条服务带。

“她的大脑里有处理芯片，你要从她那里上传？"她问道。

量子智人的头骨里不可能有芯片；芯片会干扰赋格中的量子相干性，但他们每个人的头骨外侧都有一个复杂的神经输入插孔。它有一定的存储空间，理论上，它的算法可以感染病毒。贝尔举起手腕和圣马修的服务带。

“圣马修可以投射梦境，这样我们都能看到。”

卡珊德拉说不出自己的疑虑，但其他人似乎都很警惕。小主教对着空气短暂地咽了一口口水，动作很奇怪，然后对她笑了笑，飘到了她的近前。

“我想我应该称呼您为尊敬的阁下，不是吗，梅希亚市长？"他说。

“你有什么事？

“虽然这次会面出乎意料，但这也许是一个推进双边问题的机会，"他说，然后尖锐地看着库里巴利中尉。“或者三边问题。”

“我们与傀儡们没有任何问题。"她说。

“随着我越来越多地了解约翰斯-10 牧师和阿尔霍纳先生之间的互动，“他说，”我看到了神圣傀儡和智人之间隐藏的共同点。我们每个人都能接触到宇宙中其他生物无法接触到的部分，并有可能像我们现在这样为彼此提供真知灼见。最起码，量子智人显然不希望受到公会或银行的控制。通过神圣轴心，智人可以在斯塔布斯港安家，远离这两个势力。”

卡珊德拉不知道该从何说起，还没等她做出决定，一组奇怪的全息图像就在储存圣马修的服务带上方绽放开来。抽象的形状看起来像是某种多维流形，比女傀儡用铅笔画出来的还要复杂。它的基本结构让卡珊德拉联想到了时空曲率。她研究过轴心咽喉的六维魔方结构，以及诱导虫洞的临时结构；这看起来属于同一类拓扑结构，但她以前从未见过类似的结构。它不完整。她的大脑试图插补缺失的部分，猜测这可能描述了什么样的场或力。

“这是什么？格拉西-6 问。“这很重要，不是吗？一个秘密。”

“I don’t know what it is,” Bel said. “It reminds me of things that Cassandra is better at than me.”

“What do you think it is?” Cassandra said.

He shook his head. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it’s a space-time model, but....”

“But it doesn’t correspond to anything real,” Cassandra said.

“It is important,” the bishop said, “and you’re holding back because you know it’s important. You’ve looked at her dreams before.”

“She’s had these dreams before,” Bel said. “The shapes are always intriguing and suggestive, but I’ve never found any physical meaning in them. Is there anything else to it, Rosie?”

The Puppet woman blushed and shook her head.

“Have you looked at the audio component?” Saint Matthew’s voice said.

“What audio component?”

“Some repeated patterns in here could be taken as a dimension of space-time,” the AI said, “but if you’re trying to interpret this as a space-time diagram, one portion of this looks like gravitational waves. I can render them as sound.”

The diagram shrank as if one of its dimensions had vanished, and the lines throbbed or pulsed on a loop as a low thrumming sounded in the tiny room. Bel frowned. Grassie-6 squinted.

“What is it?” the bishop demanded.

“Did you hear this sound in your dreams, Rosie?” Bel asked.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“What is it?” Grassie-6 repeated.

“I don’t know,” Bel said. “I’ve never looked in her other dreams to see if there was an audio component.”

“It means something to you? Space-time you said. Is it a map? A technology?”

“It could be a very vivid and very innocent dream,” Bel said. “Puppet neurology, like Homo quantus neurology, is very new. It hasn’t been tested by tens of thousands of years of selection. My dreams, waking and asleep, are just my brain coming to terms with my waking life. It’s very probable that Rosie’s are too.”

“Is she talented in mathematical and geometric thinking?” Saint Matthew asked, turning off the projection of the Puppet woman’s dream and showing his own strange carved face.

Bel shook his head. “I don’t think so. The opposite, isn’t it, Rosie?”

She nodded.

“Johns-10 scored quite low on mathematical aptitude,” Grassie-6 said. “Destiny chose her for the priesthood.”

“This isn’t—” Cassandra began.

“If this is a religious vision,” Bel said, “you’re really best placed to help Rosie understand it, Your Grace. The geometry is interesting in an academic, abstract sense, but this dream isn’t very different from other dreams she’s shared with me over the years.”

The bishop didn’t seem at all satisfied with this answer, but smiled diplomatically and repeated his views on the benefits of an alliance between their peoples. He backed out, pulling possessively on the priest’s arm. Lieutenant Coulibaly saluted and closed their door.

“What was that, Bel?”

“I don’t know. Rosie really has been having dreams like this for a long time. They changed her chips a couple of times. It’s not the chips. I’ve dialed into them.”

“You connected to her thoughts?”

“I’ve never found out what the dreams mean, if they mean anything. I’ve also tried not to let my brain run away with her dreams. I’ve tried to look at my reactions to them as false positives. It could be just biochemical imbalances in the Puppet brain. Do her dreams mean something to you?”

“She’s creepy, Bel,” she said in frustration. “They all are. What do you want from her?”

“They’re different, Cassie,” he said cautiously. “They’ve been used in the most fundamental ways, at the cores of their beings. Their abusers changed them. We can’t judge them for how they were twisted by others. She’s not normal, to the Puppets or to us. I reached the Free City when I was nineteen. I was... kind of running. I hadn’t found a place to belong in three years with Will Gander. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could resist entering the fugue. The Free City was different from anything I’d seen. Nothing made sense. For me, the Free City was all questions, each one with contradictory answers. I met a lot of Puppets, including some pre-seminarians, like Rosie. She wasn’t like other Puppets. She was kind of isolated because she made them uncomfortable. She was curious in ways that most Puppets aren’t. She had these dreams.”

“They don’t all hallucinate?”

“The Puppets think she’s oracular.”

“What if you’d gotten infected with something from her neural chips?” Cassie said. “Did you? Is that why you like them?”

“I don’t... like them. I sympathize with them. I pity what they’ve gone through. I respect that they haven’t just crawled into a hole and died. And I’m not stupid, Cass,” he returned with a bit of heat. “Do you think a computer virus could get into our brains? There’s certainly something objectively there in her visions. Her neural chips record her brain chemistry and activity during these episodes and they found something to measure, so she’s not making it up.”

“You talk about her like you’re close,” Cassandra said.

“We’re friends.”

“Were you more?” she said.

“What?”

“我不知道那是什么，"贝尔说。“它让我想起卡珊德拉比我擅长的事情。”

“你觉得它是什么？” 卡桑德拉说。

他摇了摇头。“如果我不知道的话，我会说这是一个时空模型，但是....”

“但它并不对应任何真实的东西。"卡桑德拉说。

“这很重要，“主教说，”你之所以忍住不说，是因为你知道这很重要。你以前看过她的梦。”

“她以前做过这些梦。"贝尔说。“这些形状总是很吸引人，让人浮想联翩，但我从未发现它们有任何物理意义。还有别的原因吗，罗西？”

女木偶红着脸摇了摇头。

“你看过音频组件了吗？” 圣马修的声音说道。

“什么音频组件？”

“这里的一些重复模式可以看作是时空维度，“人工智能说，”但如果你想把它理解为时空图，其中一部分看起来像是引力波。我可以把它们渲染成声音。”

图表缩小了，仿佛其中一个维度消失了，线条在循环中跳动或脉动，狭小的房间里响起了低沉的震颤声。贝尔皱起了眉头。格拉西 6 号眯起了眼睛。

“这是什么？"主教问道。

“你在梦里听到过这种声音吗，罗西？” 贝尔问道。

“我不知道。"她说。

“是什么声音？” 格拉西-6 重复了一遍。

“我不知道。"贝尔说。“我从来没有看过她的其他梦境，看看是否有音频成分。”

“它对你有什么意义吗？你说的时空。是地图吗？一种技术？”

“这可能是一个非常生动、非常天真的梦。"贝尔说。“木偶神经学和智人神经学一样，都是非常新的东西。它还没有经过数万年的选择考验。我的梦，无论是醒着的还是睡着的，都只是我的大脑在接受我清醒时的生活。罗西的梦也很有可能是这样”

“她在数学和几何思维方面有天赋吗？” 圣马修问道，他关掉了女木偶的梦境投影，露出了自己那张奇异的雕刻脸。

贝尔摇了摇头。“我不这么认为。恰恰相反，不是吗，罗西？”

她点了点头。

“约翰斯-10 的数学能力得分很低，"格拉西-6 说。“命运选择她成为神职人员。”

“这不是--"卡桑德拉开始说。

“如果这是一种宗教幻象，“贝尔说，”你确实最适合帮助罗西理解它，陛下。从学术、抽象的意义上讲，几何图形很有趣，但这个梦与她多年来与我分享的其他梦境并无太大区别。”

主教似乎对这个答案一点也不满意，但还是外交地笑了笑，重复了他对两国人民结盟的好处的看法。他退了出去，占有欲极强地拉着神父的胳膊。库里巴利中尉敬了个礼，然后关上了门。

“那是什么，贝尔？”

“我也不知道。罗西真的做这样的梦很久了。他们给她换了几次芯片。不是芯片的问题 我已经拨通了他们的电话。”

“你连接到了她的思想？”

“我一直不知道这些梦是什么意思 如果有什么意思的话 我也试着不让我的大脑去想她的梦境 我试着把我对梦的反应看成是假阳性反应。这可能只是傀儡大脑的生化失衡。她的梦对你有什么意义吗？”

“她让人毛骨悚然，贝尔。"她沮丧地说。“她们都是。你想从她身上得到什么？”

“它们与众不同，卡茜。"他谨慎地说。“他们在最根本的方面被利用了，在他们生命的核心。施虐者改变了他们。我们不能因为他们是如何被别人扭曲的就对他们下结论。对傀儡和我们来说，她都不正常 我19岁时到了自由城 我当时... 在逃亡 和威尔-甘德在一起的三年里 我一直没有找到归属感 我不知道自己还能抵抗多久 进入迷幻状态 自由城与我见过的任何地方都不同 一切都没有意义 对我来说，自由之城充满了问题 每个问题的答案都自相矛盾 我遇到了很多傀儡 包括一些先知，比如萝西 她和其他傀儡不一样。她被孤立了，因为她让他们感到不舒服。她的好奇心是大多数木偶所没有的。她有这些梦

“他们不会都产生幻觉吧？”

“傀儡们认为她有幻觉”

“如果你被她的神经芯片感染了怎么办？” 卡西说 “是吗？所以你才喜欢他们？”

“我不......喜欢他们。我同情他们。我同情他们的遭遇。我尊重他们没有钻进洞里等死。我也不傻，卡斯，"他带着一点火气回道。“你觉得电脑病毒能侵入我们的大脑吗？她的幻觉中肯定有客观存在的东西。她的神经芯片记录了她在这些幻觉中的大脑化学反应和活动，他们发现了一些可以测量的东西，所以她不是在瞎编。”

“你说起她的时候，好像你们很亲近。"卡桑德拉说。

“我们是朋友。”

“你们更亲密吗？"她说。

“什么？”

“Were you more than friends with her? Was she... a lover?”

Bel frowned and pushed off the wall to come closer. She moved out of the way and came to a stop at the next surface.

“What is this about, Cassie?”

“You spent years among the Puppets and now I find out you tried to connect to their brains, maybe an intellectual connection. Am I going to your bed after some Puppet was there?”

“Where is this coming from?”

“Stills!” she said. “Stills! He called you a Puppet poker.”

“What? When?”

“Months ago.”

“Why didn’t you say something if it bothered you?”

“It didn’t matter,” she said, huffing and crossing her arms. She felt like she wanted to hit something. “We weren’t going to see any more Puppets or Congregate or Banks or anyone ever again if we got far enough away. It was one thing to bury the past. It’s another to have her come to your bedroom at night to share her dreams while I’m here and find out this isn’t your first intellectual intimacy.”

“Cassie, no Puppet was ever my lover. It couldn’t have worked even if I’d wanted to. The Numen were jealous gods; they didn’t want their slaves to experience any pleasure except through them. They wanted their biological cult to be inescapable. Puppets don’t experience sexual arousal or pleasure away from the Numen. Without a Numen nearby, sexual advances toward a Puppet trigger a fight or flight response. Puppets aren’t even fertile without the Numen. In their presence, Puppets experience a kind of estrus along with the religious awe effect, and that’s when they become fertile. There’s no such thing as a Puppet lover to an outsider, even if that’s what I would have wanted. Sexual arousal is another deeply personal experience that the Numen twisted in the Puppets.”

Cassandra’s hand had tightened painfully around the grip bar. She had relief, and disgust, and the tiniest bit of pity, the kind that maybe Bel felt. Bel neared, but not too close. He met her eyes, smiling hopefully.

“I’ve always loved you and only you, Cassie.”

He offered his hand. She clasped the warm fingers.

“I’ve been thinking about what we should do,” he said.

“Is there anything we can do?” she asked. She pulled him closer, changing their moment of inertia, but both of them instinctively adjusted the angles of their legs and the bends of their knees to keep them rotationally still in the zero-g, perfectly synchronized.

“Venus is a fortress,” he said. “There’s no way to get conventional forces there, even if the Banks threw all their fleets at it. And if the Congregate thought the Banks were close to taking the Homo quantus, they would move them through the Axis Mundi in Venus’ crust.”

“To protect our own refugees, we should move them deeper into the Axis network, where no one knows where we are, not even Stills,” she said.

“There might be unconventional ways to get unconventional forces to Venus,” Bel said. “The problem is we still wouldn’t know where the Homo quantus are. We need some kind of marker or beacon. We’ve used markers before.”

They had. To navigate the Union break-out, they’d left entangled particles within the Puppet Axis. And from within the fugue, Cassandra had been able to follow the lines of entanglement from the particles in her possession to the ones floating in the Puppet Axis. She’d been able to locate that wormhole within all of the vastness of space-time.

“How would we get entangled particles to where the Homo quantus are?” she said. “Would you put some in the corpses of the dead pilots, and let them be recovered by the Congregate?”

“The Homo quantus are valuable test subjects, but dead ones might not be valuable enough to bring all the way back to Venus. Or they might be stored somewhere different from the captives. But an injured Homo quantus is a different story. To fix an injured pilot, they would bring him back to their specialists at Venus.”

“The chances of us finding a pilot who survived meeting Stills’ people is tiny, Bel.”

“Unless we make one.”

A sense of disaster crept up her spine. She pulled away, setting them both to very slow rotation.

“It wouldn’t work,” she said. “It’s throwing your life away for nothing.”

“They’re our brothers and sisters and cousins. I spent half my life alone. Now that I’m back, I feel what I’ve been missing. They’re frustrating, narrow-minded and impractical, but in the most important ways, they’re real family and my choices put them in danger. This isn’t a question of just me. It’s about what I owe to my family.”

“Throwing your life away isn’t what you owe, Bel! Living for them. Leading them together is what we owe.”

She caught a grip bar and stopped her rotation. So did he. They faced each other from opposite walls.

“The real risk of Congregate Homo quantus isn’t to the Union,” he said. “The Union has already lost; it’s only a matter of time. But if the Congregate can make Homo quantus, they might have the ability to find new axes like we did. They could follow us, Cassie, no matter where we went.”

“你和她不仅仅是朋友吗？她是......情人吗？

贝尔皱了皱眉头，推开墙走到近前。她让开了路，在下一个路面停了下来。

“这是怎么回事，卡西？”

“你在傀儡人中间待了好几年，现在我发现你试图与他们的大脑建立联系，也许是智力上的联系。难道在某个傀儡出现后，我还要去你的床上？”

“这是哪来的？”

“剧照！"她说。“斯蒂尔斯！他叫你木偶扑克。”

“什么？什么时候？

“几个月前

“如果你觉得不爽，为什么不说出来？”

“没关系，"她说，哼了一声，双手交叉。她觉得自己想打什么东西。“如果我们走得够远，就再也见不到傀儡、会聚者、班克斯或任何人了。埋葬过去是一回事。让她晚上到你的卧室来分享她的梦境，而我在这里，发现这不是你第一次智力上的亲密接触，这就是另一回事了。”

“卡西，傀儡从来都不是我的情人。即使我想，也不可能成功。努曼人是嫉妒的神；他们不希望自己的奴隶体验到任何快乐，除非通过他们。他们希望自己的生物崇拜是不可避免的。离开努曼人，傀儡不会体验到性兴奋或快感。没有努曼人在附近，对傀儡的性挑逗会引发战斗或逃跑反应。没有努曼人，傀儡甚至不能生育。有努曼人在的时候，傀儡会经历一种发情期，并伴随着宗教敬畏效应，这时他们就会有生育能力。对于外人来说，傀儡情人是不存在的，即使那是我想要的。性兴奋是努曼人在傀儡身上扭曲的另一种深刻的个人体验。”

卡桑德拉的手痛苦地握紧了握杆。她松了口气，感到厌恶，还有一丝怜悯，也许贝尔也有这种感觉。贝尔走近了，但没有靠得太近。他与她对视，满怀希望地微笑着。

“我一直爱着你，只爱你一个，卡茜”

他伸出手。她握住了温暖的手指。

“他说："我一直在想我们应该做些什么。

“有什么我们可以做的吗？"她问。她把他拉近，改变了他们的惯性力矩，但两人都本能地调整了腿的角度和膝盖的弯曲度，使他们在零重力下保持旋转静止，完全同步。

“金星是一座堡垒，"他说。“常规部队根本无法到达那里，即使班克斯把他们所有的舰队都派到那里。如果公会认为班克斯就快占领智人星了 他们就会通过金星地壳中的轴心移动他们”

“为了保护我们自己的难民，我们应该把他们转移到轴心网络的更深处，那里没有人知道我们在哪里，就连斯蒂尔斯也不知道。"她说。

“也许有非常规的方法可以把非常规的部队送到金星。"贝尔说。“问题是我们仍然不知道智人在哪里。我们需要某种标记或信标。我们以前用过标记。”

他们用过。为了引导联盟突围，他们在傀儡轴内留下了纠缠粒子。卡珊德拉从迷宫中追踪到了从她手中的粒子到漂浮在傀儡轴上的粒子之间的纠缠线。她能够在浩瀚的时空中找到那个虫洞。

“我们怎样才能把纠缠粒子送到智人所在的地方呢？"她说。“你能不能在死去的飞行员尸体里放一些，然后让会聚者把它们找回来？”

“智人是很有价值的试验品，但死去的智人可能没有足够的价值把它们带回金星。或者，他们可能被存放在与俘虏不同的地方。但受伤的智人就不同了。为了修复受伤的飞行员，他们会把他带回金星的专家那里。”

“我们找到一个遇到斯蒂尔斯的人还活着的飞行员的可能性很小，贝尔。”

“除非我们制造一个。”

一种灾难的感觉爬上了她的脊梁。她拉开了距离，让它们缓慢地旋转起来。

“这行不通。"她说。“这是在白白送命。”

“他们是我们的兄弟姐妹和表兄弟姐妹。我孤独地度过了半生。现在我回来了，我感受到了我的缺失。他们令人沮丧、心胸狭窄、不切实际，但在最重要的方面，他们是真正的家人，而我的选择让他们处于危险之中。这不是我一个人的问题。而是我对家人的责任”

“抛弃生命不是你的责任，贝尔！为他们而活 带领他们一起生活，这才是我们欠他们的。”

她抓住了一根握杆，停止了转动。他也是 他们从对面的墙壁面对面。

“会聚智人的真正风险不在于联盟，"他说。“联盟已经输了，这只是时间问题。但如果会聚体能制造出智人量子，他们就可能有能力像我们一样找到新的轴心。他们可以跟踪我们，卡西，不管我们去哪里。”

 

“They already have all the project notes. They’ll have copies scattered safely. Even if we got the captives back, the Congregate can always replicate the project’s work.”

“Over decades,” he said, “and by then maybe our trail would be cold. But they’re starting with more than a hundred Homo quantus of generations nine, ten and eleven. They might be trying to create new embryos even now, with all the resources of a motivated imperial power.”

“What about the Hortus quantus? What about resurrecting that species?” she said.

“I want that, more than anything. But right now, the Hortus quantus are dead and our captive people are alive. I’ve given everything I know to our people. They might make a breakthrough. If our people live, they can try to recreate what I destroyed. But if in decades or centuries we’re all just captive subjects of the Congregate, we never will.”

Words stuck in her heart. Maybe there weren’t even words to express what she felt. Or even experience to know what emotions these were. Bel neared along the wall, but didn’t touch.

“There’s a chance I could live, Cassie, but that doesn’t have to be part of the calculation. Sometimes one person has to cover the escape of everyone else.”

“他们已经有了所有的项目说明。他们会把副本安全地散落在各地。即使我们救回了俘虏，公理会也可以复制项目的成果。”

“几十年后，“他说，”到那时，也许我们的线索已经断了。但他们从一百多个九代、十代和十一代智人开始。他们可能现在就在试图制造新的胚胎，并拥有一个积极进取的帝国的所有资源。”

“那霍特人呢？复活那个物种怎么样？"她说。

“我最想要的就是这个。但现在，Hortus quantus 死了，而我们的俘虏还活着。我已经把我所知道的一切都给了我们的人。他们可能会有所突破。如果我们的人还活着 他们可以尝试重建被我摧毁的东西 但如果几十年或几百年后，我们都只是会社的俘虏，那就永远不会了。”

这些话深深地刺痛了她的心。也许她甚至无法用言语表达自己的感受。甚至没有经验知道这些情感是什么。贝尔沿着墙壁靠近，但没有碰到。

“我有可能活下来，卡茜，但这不一定是计算的一部分。有时候，一个人必须为其他人的逃生负责。”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

April 2515

The yacht shuddered as the first wisps of Venus’ skirts brushed the ship. Seventy-five kilometers above the surface was far, even for the goddess, but as the saying went, Venus was a grasping bitch. Marie took it as a good omen. She was strapped in her seat, looking out the window at star-spotted black space over fluffy clouds lit white by the hard sun behind her. Colored lights high above showed orbital traffic, approaching, leaving and orbiting. They were too high yet, and Venus too expansive and secretive for her to see any detail of home yet. While a good fraction of Venus’ people floated in the sun above the clouds, a larger portion lived within her diaphanous, stormy skirts, hidden from orbit. Marie did see something though: a tiny, distant flyer matched their trajectory, rising as the yacht neared aerobraking.

“Tabarnak,” she said, unstrapping.

“Mademoiselle, please stay in your seat during descent,” a waiter said, strapped into his own seat.

“I’m gotta hurl,” Marie said as she moved back through the games room and bar. He called after her. She wobbled as the yacht hit the atmosphere hard and unevenly. The bar’s glassware was packed snugly and nothing got damaged, although she might be when the turbulence got worse. She found her minder in his utility seat at the back. He wore a yacht uniform and his badge said “Social Convenor.” He’d been keeping them all entertained for the last six days.

“Get in your seat!” he said.

Marie’s hard fingers gripped the bar rail.

“There’s someone coming up,” she said.

“What?”

“There’s a goddamn flyer coming up. You said we wouldn’t have any trouble with border services.”

“Maybe it’s customs,” he said, “or a coincidence.”

“You’re not being paid for coincidences,” Marie said.

Strictly speaking, she wasn’t paying him though. As best she understood, her aunt’s clean up lawyers had hired a refueling logistics company to pay a hefty fee to a service consultant who was really a people-smuggler. And Marie wasn’t Marie anymore. Well, she was, but she was carrying the passport chip of a woman called Andrée Fortier. The passport was legit and just enough of Fortier’s blood and DNA was in a special sack implanted in Marie’s arm that the chip would transmit an identity match signal when queried by automated systems. But Marie didn’t look anything like the tall, willowy Fortier and if asked for a DNA sample from a real person, well...

The social convenor called up external sensors in a holographic display as the yacht bucked again. A long rumble accompanied their atmospheric braking and Marie held onto the bar rail hard. The hologram showed their descent vector and the flyer below keeping pace with them. Its identification was Border Services.

“Crisse. Câlisse,” she swore.

“It might be a spot inspection. They might not be here for us,” he said, but his cheeks had paled.

Marie didn’t know the law very well, but if it was more than a coincidence and Border Services found the four illegals, the law wouldn’t be throwing the people-smuggler a party, that’s for sure.

“How hot are the other three?” she whispered. Had she wound up travelling with some spies or war criminals?

“They shouldn’t be hot,” he said. Then he frowned and looked at her.

“I have tax problems,” Marie said. “”Nobody important wants me.”

“I know the others. They wouldn’t have drawn attention.”

“Why the hell would I?” Marie said. “Listen. We’re gonna be bleeding speed until sixty-eight kilometers. I could drop out the back if I had a pair of wings.”

“While the Border Services flyer is out there?”

“All four of us could drop out. They can’t catch all of us.”

“What did you do?” he said. “Who are you?”

“I’m nobody! I owe a lot of taxes, but Congregate Revenue doesn’t send out accountants in intercept flyers. And let’s get one thing straight, mister coincidence. If they ask me how I got someone else’s passport in my arm, I’m not going to be shy about getting them to think about you. So how do we get me off this yacht?”

“They’re outside! If they’re boarding, their ship will be under us the whole time.”

“I wonder if I could go outside the yacht, onto the roof or get behind the thrusters?”

“The yacht sensors will know when an airlock opens. Just go to your seat. The passport will work. Stay cool.”

“I’m always cool,” Marie said, stomping to the door beside him leading to the cargo areas and engine rooms. “Emergency suits and wing packs are back there, eh? Open this,” she said.

The yacht descended into thicker cloud and the sudden deceleration flung Marie onto her back and dragged her to the door back to the passenger cabin. She caught a floor bar and then hauled herself back to her feet. She staggered back to her stupid social convenor and the sternward door.

当维纳斯的第一缕裙摆擦过游艇时，游艇颤抖了一下。离海面 75 千米的高度，即使对女神来说也很遥远，但俗话说，维纳斯是个抓不住的婊子。玛丽认为这是个好兆头。她被绑在座位上，望着窗外星星点点的黑色空间，蓬松的云朵被身后坚硬的太阳照得发白。高空的彩色灯光显示着轨道交通，接近的、离开的、绕行的。它们还太高，金星也太广阔和神秘，她还看不到家园的任何细节。金星上的大部分人都漂浮在云层之上的阳光中，而更多的人则生活在她那薄如蝉翼、风雨交加的裙摆里，被轨道遮挡住了。不过，玛丽还是看到了一些东西：一个微小而遥远的飞行器与他们的轨迹一致，在游艇接近空中制动时上升。

“塔巴纳克，"她松开缆绳说。

“小姐，请在下降过程中不要离开座位，"一位服务员绑在自己的座位上说。

“我要吐了，"玛丽边说边穿过游戏室和酒吧。他在后面叫她。她摇摇晃晃地走着，因为游艇重重地撞在大气层上，而且撞得很不均匀。酒吧里的玻璃器皿被挤得严严实实，没有受到任何损坏，不过当气流更加剧烈时，她可能会受到损坏。她在后面的杂物间座位上找到了她的看管人。他穿着游艇制服，徽章上写着 “社交召集人”。在过去的六天里，他一直在逗他们开心。

“坐到座位上去！"他说。

玛丽坚硬的手指紧紧抓住吧台的栏杆。

“有人上来了。"她说。

“什么？”

“有个该死的传单上来了。你说过我们在边境服务方面不会有任何麻烦。”

“也许是海关，“他说，”也许是巧合。”

“玛丽说："你不是为了巧合而得到报酬的。

严格来说，她并没有付钱给他。据她所知，她姨妈的清理律师雇了一家加油物流公司，付给一个服务顾问一笔不菲的费用，而这个服务顾问其实是个偷渡客。玛丽不再是玛丽了。好吧，她是玛丽，但她带着一个叫安德烈-福蒂埃的女人的护照芯片。这本护照是合法的，在玛丽手臂上植入的特制袋子里有足够多的福蒂埃的血液和 DNA，当自动系统查询时，芯片会发出身份匹配信号。但玛丽看起来一点也不像身材高大、杨柳依依的福蒂埃，如果被要求提供真人的 DNA 样本，那么......

游艇再次颠簸时，社交召集人在全息显示屏上调用了外部传感器。一声长长的隆隆声伴随着他们的大气制动，玛丽使劲抓着栏杆。全息图显示了他们的下降矢量，以及下方与他们保持同步的飞行器。它的标识是边境服务。

“Crisse。Câlisse，"她发誓说。

“可能是抽查。他们可能不是来找我们的，"他说，但脸颊已经苍白。

玛丽对法律不是很了解，但如果这不仅仅是巧合，边防局发现了那四名非法移民，法律肯定不会给偷渡者开派对。

“另外三个人有多性感？"她低声问道。难道她和一些间谍或战犯走在了一起？

“他们应该不热，"他说。然后他皱起眉头看着她。

“我有税务问题，"玛丽说。“没有重要人物想要我”

“我认识其他人。他们不会引起注意的。”

“我怎么会？” 玛丽说 “听着 我们在六十八公里之前都在高速飞行。如果我有一对翅膀，我就能从后面掉下来。”

“当边防局的飞行员在外面的时候？”

“我们四个都可以跳伞。他们不可能抓住我们所有人。”

“你做了什么？"他说。“你是谁？”

“我什么都不是！我是个无名小卒！我欠了很多税，但公理会税务局不会派会计去拦截传单。让我们把话说清楚，巧合先生。如果他们问我是怎么把别人的护照塞进胳膊里的 我可不会害羞地让他们想到你 那我们怎么把我从游艇上弄下来？”

“他们在外面！如果他们要登船，他们的船会一直在我们下面。”

“我想知道我能不能到游艇外面去，到屋顶上去 或者到推进器后面去？”

“气闸打开时，游艇传感器会知道。回到你的座位上就行。护照会起作用的。保持冷静。”

“我一直都很冷静。"玛丽说着，跺着脚走向旁边通往货物区和引擎室的门。“应急服和翼包在后面，是吗？打开这个。"她说。

游艇降落到更厚的云层中，突然的减速把玛丽甩到背上，拖到通往客舱的门边。她抓住了一根地板杆，然后又把自己拖了回来。她踉踉跄跄地回到她那愚蠢的社交召集人身边，回到船尾的门边。

“Go back to your seat!” he said. “You’re going to draw attention to yourself.”

“I told them I was puking. Open the door.”

“If Border Services boards, they’re going to see one passenger is unaccounted for.”

“If I fall, I’m falling on you. So trust me. I have a plan and my plans always work.”

He didn’t move so she gripped his wrist hard enough for him to understand he was playing with fire as she scanned his service band over the door control. The door slid open.

“See?” she said. “We’re a good team. We’ll get out of this fine.”

He cradled his wrist. Wimp. She hadn’t even squeezed that hard.

Marie almost fell backwards again as the yacht descended and its deceleration peaked, but she clung to the door frame and pulled herself sternward.

“Show me a smile, sweetie,” she said. “It’s going to be fine.”

She struggled against the deceleration and shut the door behind her. The utility area was packed with food stuffs, empty wine jars, and emergency vacuum and atmospheric suits. The atmospherics weren’t high end, just enough to abandon ship, blow an emergency balloon and wait a few hours for pick up. There were some wing packs though, and no cameras here, which was promising.

The yacht had slowed and flew level now. The bumps and hops of turbulence might have been deeper storms bulging up beyond sixty-five kilometers, or airlocks opening. She imagined the Border Services agents in their armor, looking around, checking passenger manifests. Hopefully someone was hotter than her and they left, but she doubted it. She would have loved to have known how many of them were coming sternward, and how heavily armed they were. Marie was tough, but lots of weapons would still make a big hole in her guts. Luckily, those weapons would also hole a yacht hull and wouldn’t be anyone’s first choice.

After a while, she started getting bored. It had been forty-five minutes and nothing was happening. She found a head and went pee. She didn’t go back to her hiding place yet and pressed her ear to the door. She couldn’t hear anything. The view out the portholes further back didn’t hint at what the hold-up was. Maybe they were gunning for someone else? Maybe they’d netted the other three and no one had ratted her out. She was about to go back to the door to listen again when it chirped and opened. She darted back into the head and slid the door shut. She wished she’d gotten back into her real hiding spot behind some crates. This head was for crew and she wasn’t sure how much they cleaned it.

There was a knock at the door.

She flushed. Turned on the water. Washed her hands.

“Services frontaliers,” an electonically-amplified voice said. “Come out.”

“Almost done,” Marie sang, turning on the air dryer.

The door shook as a fist hit it.

“There’s another head!” she yelled through the door. “Don’t be a dick.”

She flipped off the lock, smiled sweetly and slid the door open with one hand as her other shot out grasping the agent’s throat tightly. He struggled and tried to draw a sidearm, but Marie grabbed his wrist. She leaned out of the head and looked forward. No one was there, but the door to the passenger area was open. The yacht rocked with turbulence.

Marie carried the flailing, punching agent sternward by his neck. She didn’t want to kill him, but she couldn’t afford him to speak a single command into his radio. If she remembered right, it took a minute knock someone out by choking. Or was it less? She might not be able to squeeze his carotid arteries through the neck of the suit.

“Shut up,” she whispered, shaking him. “If you make noise, everyone’s coming back here and you already found three people on false passports, right? And a people smuggler. Did you meet the social convener? He sold fake passports to those people. And he’s not even entertaining. I had to drink myself stupid on this trip.”

After a while, the border agent stopped wiggling. She flipped the clasps on his helmet and took it off. He was still breathing shallowly. She stripped off his suit. He was a bigger than her, but it wasn’t the first time she’d found a suit designed without the petite soldier in mind. She moved briskly, and in about two minutes she was locking the helmet into place. French messages and commands were coming through.

“Nothing back here,” she texted back.

“回到你的座位上去！"他说。“你会引起别人注意的”

“我告诉他们我在呕吐。把门打开。”

“如果边防局登机 他们会发现有一名乘客下落不明”

“如果我摔倒了，我会摔在你身上 所以相信我 我有计划，我的计划总是有效的。”

他没有动，于是她用力握住他的手腕，让他明白自己是在玩火，因为她扫描了他在门禁上的服务带。门滑开了。

“看到了吗？"她说。“我们是一个很好的团队。我们会没事的。”

他握住了自己的手腕。胆小鬼 她甚至都没捏那么用力。

当游艇下降，减速达到顶峰时，玛丽差点又向后摔倒，但她紧紧抓住门框，把自己拉向船尾。

“笑一笑，亲爱的，"她说。“一切都会好起来的”

她奋力抵抗着减速，关上了身后的门。杂物间里堆满了食品、空酒瓶、应急真空服和大气服。大气防护服并不高端，只够弃船、吹应急气球和等待几个小时的接应。不过，这里有一些翼包，而且没有摄像头，这很有希望。

游艇放慢了速度，现在已经平飞了。湍流的颠簸和跳跃可能是更深的风暴在六十五公里外隆起，也可能是气闸打开了。她想象着边防局的工作人员穿着盔甲，四处张望，检查乘客名单。但愿有人比她更性感，然后他们就离开了，但她对此表示怀疑。她很想知道他们有多少人是朝船尾方向来的，他们有多少全副武装。玛丽很坚强，但很多武器还是会在她的内脏上打出一个大洞。幸运的是，这些武器也会打穿游艇船体，不会成为任何人的首选。

过了一会儿，她开始感到无聊。已经过了四十五分钟，什么也没发生。她找了个地方撒了泡尿。她还没有回到藏身之处，而是把耳朵贴在门上。她什么也听不到。从后面的舷窗往外看，也看不出有什么动静。也许他们在找别人？也许他们已经抓住了另外三个人，但没有人告发她。她正准备回到门边再听一遍，门 “吱呀 ”一声开了。她飞快地跑回头，把门关上。她真希望自己能回到箱子后面真正的藏身之处。这个脑袋是给工作人员用的，她不知道他们打扫得有多干净。

有人敲门。

她冲了冲水。打开水龙头。洗了洗手。

“服务前台，"一个电子放大的声音说。“出来吧”

“快好了，"玛丽唱道，打开了烘干机。

一个拳头打在门上，门震了一下。

“还有一个人头！"她隔着门喊道。“别那么混蛋”

她打开门锁，甜甜一笑，一手推开门，另一只手伸出紧紧抓住特工的喉咙。他挣扎着试图拔枪，但玛丽抓住了他的手腕。她俯身伸出头，向前望去。那里没有人，但通往乘客区的门是开着的。游艇在乱流中摇晃。

玛丽拎着那个摇摇晃晃、拳打脚踢的特工的脖子向船尾走去。她不想杀他，但她不能让他对着无线电说出一个命令。如果她没记错的话，掐死一个人需要一分钟。还是更短？她可能无法通过宇航服的颈部挤压他的颈动脉。

“闭嘴，"她低声说，摇了摇他。“如果你发出声音，所有人都会回到这里，你已经发现了三个持假护照的人，对吧？还有一个人口走私犯。你见过那个社会召集人吗？他把假护照卖给了那些人。他一点都不有趣 这次旅行我把自己都喝傻了。”

过了一会儿，边防人员停止了扭动。她拨开他头盔上的扣子，把头盔摘了下来。他的呼吸仍然很浅。她脱掉了他的西装。他比她高大，但这并不是她第一次发现在设计西装时没有考虑到身材娇小的士兵。她动作轻快，大约两分钟后就把头盔锁好了。法语信息和命令陆续传来。

“这里没有动静，"她回道。

She darkened the faceplate further and headed forward. Four border agents were checking passports and visas in the passenger area. Two of the people Marie had been smuggled with were standing in handcuffs at the front of the passenger area. So was the social convener. No one paid her any mind and she mounted the stairs to an observation deck and the opening to the airlocks. Two wingpacks were near the airlock. Good ones too, government issued, made for chasing contraband someone might dump into the atmosphere when customs enthusiasts came close. She strapped one on and plugged the command feed into her helmet. The airlock wheeled open easily, and she closed herself in and blew the air. Someone signalled the airlock panel through the yacht comms. She gave a thumbs up.

Messages started showing up in her HUD: “Bélanger, what are you doing?”

Someone just went through and is making a run for it, she texted. They bypassed the airlock alerts but I saw them go.

A flurry of activity filled her message screens and earpieces as she emerged onto the roof. The wide black bowl of the sky took up half the world, while below yellow-white clouds reflected blinding sunlight from horizon to horizon. The yacht rocked, passing from one pocket of high weather to another. She was home. All-points-bulletins and alarms filled the helmet displays.

I think I see him! she texted to the other border agents. In pursuit.

She ran along the top of the yacht, extending her wings. Their buoyancy was already set for high-atmosphere flight. The engine on her back whirred to life and showed green as she leapt out over the turbulent, fickle goddess who had raised her.

她进一步调暗面板，朝前走去。四名边防人员正在乘客区检查护照和签证。和玛丽一起偷渡的两个人带着手铐站在乘客区的前端。社会召集人也是如此。没有人理她，她走上楼梯，来到观景台和通往气闸的开口处。气闸附近有两个翼包。这也是政府配发的好东西，用于在海关人员靠近时追捕有人可能会倾倒到大气层中的违禁品。她绑上一个，把指令馈线插入头盔。气闸很容易就打开了，她把自己关进去，吹了口气。有人通过游艇通讯器向气闸面板发出信号。她竖起了大拇指。

信息开始显示在她的 HUD 上："贝朗格，你在做什么？”

她发短信说："有人刚刚通过，正在逃跑。他们绕过了气闸警报，但我看到他们走了。

当她出现在屋顶上时，她的信息屏幕和耳机里充满了各种活动。宽阔的黑天占据了半个世界，下面黄白色的云层从地平线到地平线反射着刺眼的阳光。游艇摇摇晃晃，从一个高温天气区驶向另一个高温天气区。她到家了。头盔显示屏上充斥着各点公告和警报。

我想我看到他了！她给其他边境特工发短信。追击中。

她沿着游艇顶部跑动，伸展双翼。它们的浮力已经为高大气层飞行做好了准备。她背上的引擎呼呼作响，显示出绿色的光芒，她一跃而起，飞越了养育她的动荡而善变的女神