House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds Read Free Book Online Page B

‘And rightly so. You wouldn’t want us as enemies, but getting on the wrong side of the Machine People ... that doesn’t bear thinking about.’
    ‘You’ve been playing with fire,’ I said. ‘Now give us Hesperus, before you make things any worse for yourself.’

CHAPTER FOUR
    While we were waiting for the necessary arrangements to be made, Doctor Meninx stole over to my console and bent down to whisper in my ear.
    His voice was a rustle of ghost-stirred leaves. ‘I cannot impress on you strongly enough the mistake you will be making if you let that thing aboard. You must reason with Campion.’
    ‘Reason with him yourself.’
    ‘He will not listen to me. He knows what I am - a Disavower. I am expected not to approve of the robot. But you are different. If you raise an objection, he will give it due consideration.’
    ‘And if I don’t have an objection?’
    ‘You must!’ the avatar hiss-rustled. ‘Let that thing aboard and no good will come of it!’
    ‘He’s not a thing. He’s an envoy of the Machine People, lost and a long way from home.’
    ‘It may well be a trick of Ateshga’s - just some robot weapon he’s trying to smuggle aboard your ship so he can hijack it and claim it back.’
    ‘Do make your mind up, Doctor: are you against Hesperus because of your Disavower principles, or because you think he’s not really a Machine Person at all?’
    ‘I am against it on as many counts as I can think of.’
    ‘The Machine People are more civilised than most human societies. Hesperus will just be another guest.’
    ‘A wind-up toy that walks and talks.’ The avatar’s harlequin face creased into an expression of abject disgust. ‘Haunted clockwork!’
    ‘You won’t have to associate with him if you don’t want to. And if it really bothers you, you can always go into abeyance until the voyage is over.’
    ‘The automatic assumption being that I should be the one to go into abeyance, and not the robot? Nice to know where I stand in the pecking order, at last! Relegated by a box full of mindless algorithms!’
    ‘Doctor Meninx,’ I said, as forcibly as I could manage, ‘Hesperus is coming aboard. That’s final. As shatterlings of Gentian Line, we could not possibly refuse to assist him.’
    ‘It will not see me. You will tell it nothing of my origins, nothing of my physical existence, nothing of my beliefs.’
    ‘Then I suggest you keep a very low profile,’ I said. ‘If Hesperus catches one of your avatars wandering around, he’s likely to wonder who’s operating it, isn’t he?’
    ‘You will tell it only that I am a scholar. It does not need to know any more than that. And I will not have it anywhere near my tank.’
    ‘Why would he have the slightest interest in your tank?’
    ‘Because,’ the avatar said, ‘when it learns who I am - as I am sure it will - it will make every effort to kill me.’
    I pushed my hand into the open slot of the maker and closed my fingers around the sculpted handle of the energy-pistol. The newly minted weapon had the peculiar heft of something crammed with intricate machinery at abnormal densities. Levators allowed me to hold it, but it still had the mass of a small boulder. The adepts who made use of these weapons normally donned power-armour to overcome that residual inertia, but I did not wish to greet my guest looking like another robot.
    I kept telling myself not to be so nervous, but as soon as I chased one fear away, another circled into place. No Machine Person had ever harmed a human being, so the weapon might have been regarded as both superfluous and insulting. But I was about to release a prisoner who not only possessed superhuman speed and strength, but who might have been rendered half-deranged by the time he had spent in Ateshga’s care.
    I just hoped that the weapon would leave more than a dent on that golden armour, if it came to that.
    ‘We’re sure about this?’ Campion asked.
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not remotely. But I think