Echopraxia by Peter Watts Read Free Book Online Page B

short of patting him on the head.
    He stood. “Glad to hear it. Then I guess I’ll leave you to your games, and thanks for the meal.”
    She looked up at him. “You know that can’t happen. Jim already told you that much.”
    â€œAre you going to tell me where my bike is, or do I have to walk?”
    â€œYou can’t leave, Dan.”
    â€œYou can’t keep me prisoner.”
    â€œIt’s not us you have to worry about.”
    â€œWho’s us, this time? Bicamerals, vampires? Koalas?”
    She pointed north across the desert, squinting. “Look out there. On that ridge.”
    He did. He saw nothing at first. Then, briefly, something glinted in the morning sun: a spark on the escarpment.
    â€œNow look up,” she said. A distant shard of brightness stabbed his eye from high to the east, a reflection of sunlight off empty sky.
    â€œNot us,” Lianna repeated. “You.”
    â€œMe—?”
    â€œPeople like you. Baselines.”
    He let it sink in.
    â€œValerie must have hacked a fair number of sats just getting her pieces into position. As far as anything in orbit could tell, this whole chunk of desert just dropped out of existence for a good four hours last night. That got people’s attention. Someone probably slipped a drone or two under the ceiling in time to see our engine going through its paces—and those dance steps are, shall we say, a bit beyond what passes for state-of-the-art out there.” Lianna sighed. “The Bicamerals have been spooking the wrong people for years now. Too many breakthroughs, too fast, the usual. They’ve been watching, all this time they’ve been watching. And now, as far as they can tell, we’re in some kind of gang war with a bunch of zombies.
    â€œThey are not going to let this pass, Dan. Now that they’ve caught a glimpse behind the curtain they’ll have thrown a net over the whole reserve.”
    And I, Brüks reflected, don’t blame them one goddamned bit . “I’m not part of this. You said it yourself.”
    â€œYou’re a witness. They’ll debrief you.”
    â€œSo they’ll debrief me.” Brüks shrugged. “You haven’t told me anything. I haven’t seen anything they haven’t, if they deployed drones.”
    â€œYou’ve seen more than you realize. Everyone does. And they will know that, so your debriefing with be aggressive .”
    â€œSo that makes you, what? My personal guard? Here to feed me, and walk me, and make sure I don’t wander off into any of the rooms where the grown-ups are talking. And yank on my leash if I try to leave. That about sum it up?”
    â€œDan—”
    â€œLook, you’re giving me a choice between a vampire with her zombie army and you baselines, as you so delicately put it.”
    She got to her feet. “I’m not giving you a choice.”
    â€œI have to leave sometime. I can’t spend the rest of my life here.”
    â€œIf you try to leave now,” she said, “that’s exactly what you’ll have done.”
    He looked down at her: thin as a pussy willow, she only came up to his chest.
    â€œYou going to stop me?”
    She looked back without blinking. “I’m gonna try. If I have to. But I really hope it doesn’t come to that.”
    He stood there for the longest time. Then he picked up his plate.
    â€œFuck you,” he said, and went back inside.
    *   *   *
    Within his prison, she gave him all the space in the world. She backed right off as he stalked down the hall, past the murmuring of the devout and the hyperkinetic gaze of the frozen zombies, past the closed-door deliberations of enemies-of-enemies and the open doors of dorms and studies and bathrooms. He moved without direction at first, following any corridor that presented itself, backtracking from every cul-de-sac, his feet exploring autonomously while his gut