The Third Claw of God (46 page)

Now Jason was approaching, too, his expression wary as he focused on me and on Philip in turn. The voice of the AIsource rumbled in my head.The choice is yours, Counselor.

For me it was as if every atom in the universe had ceased moving, leaving me the sole animate object in a tableau of statues.

This is it?

This is it. This is the moment that determines the future we talked about. This is the moment that decides whether a race lives or dies, and whether humanity will have to pay a price for its genocide. But you haven’t given me anything!

We have given you as much as the Rules of Engagement permit. We have provided you with two clear alternative futures: one where you remain on Xana and throw your considerable talents behind what Jason and Jelaine are doing, and one where you remain apart and independent and free to act elsewhere even if that means opposing them. In one future, your active participation helps to speed their new vision of the Bettelhine Corporation; in the other, they struggle on without your counsel and need additional time to consolidate power. In one future billions die, a major sentient race meets extinction, and humanity pays a devastating price. In the other, billions die, but the targeted race survives, hope is preserved and, though Mankind suffers, a better future awaits after the last shots are fired. One of these alternatives benefits us, the other our enemies. One will provide us the release we crave and thus free the organic intelligences of our interference; the other will deny us our ending. You will have reason to suspect, within a very few months, whether you made the correct decision. You will be at the center of those events. But first you must determine that future with the choice you make now.

Th-that’s crazy! How the fuck am I supposed to know, with both sides whispering in my ears?

You don’t. You’re not clairvoyant. We can only advise that in this particular case the choice that gives humanity a fighting chance is the same as the choice that’s right for you. And how am I supposed to know that?

It’s the only guideline you’ll have. Good luck, Counselor.

Silence.

I wanted to scream at them. Had there ever been a moment when I could have torn their hidden hardware apart with my bare hands, that was it. I hated them as much as I’d ever hated anything, and I’m a goddamned talented hater.

But the universe was moving again, and I was running out of time.

So I put aside all my anger at my secret masters and considered how much the redirection of the Bettelhine business would benefit humanity.

I considered the mind control being used to arrange it.

I considered all the arguments about the ends justifying the means. I considered times I’d bought those arguments and times when I’d considered them bullshit. I considered everything I could have if I tossed my lot in with Jason and Jelaine. I considered what it would cost me.

I considered the Dip Corps betraying me every single moment of my life since childhood. I thought about an existence I’d spent with a billion knives at my back and the alternative, life in a warm, generous place among people who were willing to love me.

I thought about the first stirrings of reciprocal love I’d begun to feel for Jason and Jelaine, the instinctive affection I’d wanted to feel for the gray-haired old monster once I knew that he’d been brother to my mother.

I thought about the fact that he hadn’t done a damn thing for my mother when he still had his own will working for him.

I thought about being handed everything I could ever want and on top of that having the excuse that I’d be building a future not just for myself but for everybody the new Bettelhine Corporation would help. I thought about my mission for the AIsource, my promise to find a way to kill them, a quixotic assignment likely far beyond the reach of any human being. I thought about the crimes their rogue intelligences, the Unseen Demons, had committed and thought about how I might never be able to bring them to justice, either; how even if I managed the impossible after ten years or twenty or thirty or at any point before I died, it would neither bring back my family nor lessen the guilt I felt for my own participation in the massacre on Bocai.

I thought about the Porrinyards, still sitting up there in my personal transport, waiting for me to make my decision, and yes, I loved them as much as they loved me, but was it right for them to make me choose between staying with my family or staying with them? If I went to them and said that I’d decided to stay here, could I persuade them to remain with me if I argued for the cause of Jason-and-Jelaine? Would they want to help? Or would they see how much of the decision to stay would have been predicated on the easier path, the one of home and comfort and family? What if I told them that somebody had to keep an eye on Jason and Jelaine from now on, to make sure that the moral compromises the pair had made so far didn’t lead to more and someday might devolve into a system as destructive as the one they were trying to change?

Jason, Jelaine, and their father were almost upon me now. But their smiles were now faltering, as they saw how much I was struggling.

It would be so easy to stay.

But what had the Porrinyards said?

After everything, it all came down to this.

Remember who you are.

I’d refused to endure another elevator ride, so Jason and Jelaine had one of the family retainers fly me back up to Layabout.

I made it to my personal transport, still waiting for me at the VIP facilities, less than two hours after my brief return to and stormy departure from Jelaine Bettelhine’s estate. The Porrinyards were sitting together at the control panel, looking more lost than I’d ever seen them. They didn’t notice my entrance until I tossed my satchel on the floor behind them. Given the changes in my appearance and my uncharacteristic clothing it took them all of half a second to recognize me before they leaped up and embraced me with the shared fervor of lovers who had not known whether they’d ever be seeing me again.

“I’m sorry,” they wept.

I held them tight. “It’s all right. I understand.”

They had figured out the whole thing, up to and including the nature of the hold Jason and Jelaine had on Hans, when we were still on the Royal Carriage and they were reviewing the files in the Khaajiir’s staff. The truth had repelled them, even more than the prior history of the Bettelhines had already repelled them.

“But this was your family,” they continued, the tears drying on their cheeks, their shared misery too much for the small space between them. “You’d already lost it twice: once before you were born, and then again on Bocai. Given everything I knew, I couldn’t remain with you if you decided to return to them, but I couldn’t make myself take them away from you a third time. I had to let you decide what was yours…and what wasn’t.”

I’d misinterpreted their attitude on the carriage. Their shared horror at my treatment of Colette Wilson had been less about my anger and revulsion at the moment (bad as that had been), than what I could become.

Ever since determining that I’d recover from my injuries and giving me the freedom I needed to make my decision, they’d been sitting here, unable to return to New London and unable to return to me, waiting for word, resting all their faith in my ability to make the choice they hoped I’d make, and wondering whether they’d made a terrible mistake.

I’d be wondering the same thing, for different reasons, a great deal in the days to come. There’d be sleepless nights and hopeless days. But right now I had no doubts whatsoever. Iknew .

“I’ll want the first available departure window.”

In all the universe, there’s no sun brighter than the special kind of smile only found on loved ones who think they may have lost you forever, and now find out they’re wrong. I was lucky enough to get it from two faces at once.

It was another couple of minutes before Skye could separate herself from me long enough to go prepare the bluegel crypts, and Oscin could return to his seat and start calling up our nav program. When I sat down next to him, feeling more at home in that tiny space than at any point in the few hours that I’d experienced the bonds of family, he gave me another appraising look and said, “Nice outfit. Nice hair.”

I punched his shoulder. “Shut up.”

With each book I write, I ask the same pressing question. To wit: does anybody, anywhere, ever read this page if they don’t have some pressing reason to expect their own names to appear? And how can casual readers know that I’m not making stuff up? Seriously, would you even have any reason to suspect that I was pulling names out of my nether regions were I to testify to the sterling example of one Gordon Mung, who lent me money, cleaned my clothes, spent six months on a cot in his garage so I could move into his bedroom and sleep beside his wife for that period, and who generally proved such a model of generosity, courage and moral rectitude that I despair at the very thought of ever living up to his standard? I gotta tell you, Gordon’s an absolute saint. You want him as best friend. That said, this book would not exist if not for my lovely wife, Judi. I must also thank Brad Aiken and my webmaster Dina Pearlman, who tolerated tuckerizations; Michael Burstein, Jack McDevitt, Jerry Oltion, Joey Green, and Rob Sawyer; the various members of the South Florida Science Fiction Society writing workshop, including Chris Negelein, Wade Brown, George Peterson, Dave Dunn, the aforementioned Brad Aiken, Cliff Dunbar, Ben Burgis, and Melinda Galy, who read and critiqued the MS in progress; good guys Stanley Schmidt, Scott Edelman, Johnny Atomic and Harlan Ellison, for other forms of support; agent extraordinaire Joshua Bilmes and editor extraordinaire Diana Gill. There are also the various regulars of my newsgroup onwww.sff.net , who provide distraction on a daily basis. If there are any names I left out, blame the Unseen Demons.—A-TC

About the Author

ADAM-TROY CASTRO’s short stories have been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards. The acclaimed author of the previous Andrea Cort novel,Emissaries from the Dead , he lives in Florida with his wife, Judi, and their four cats.

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“The most powerful science fiction novel of the year.”

Michael A. Burstein

“Emissaries from the Deadis SF at its best:Silence of the Lambs as Larry Niven might have written it. A clever, thought-provoking page-turner. Bravo!”

Robert J. Sawyer

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Locus

“A brilliantly executed novel, fully successful as both science fiction and murder mystery…. Powerfully compelling…. One of the best science fiction novels of the year so far.”

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“Adam-Troy Castro has given us the ultimate high-wire thriller.”

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By Adam-Troy Castro

The Andrea Cort Novels