It seemed that Rolleston put Cronin in harm’s way. As the attack began, Rolleston had transported Cronin and Kring through the Citadel’s added-on flesh parts to the boardroom. The slime they were covered in was lubricant. It helped you get transported through the root system better. We’d all been covered in it after Morag had hacked my flesh, turned me into something else and used me to interface with the roots.
And the hack had been successful. Except now, surely they knew that their systems were compromised? They knew about our miraculous escape and they would know that we had Cronin.
More than a day in space and the Tetsuo Chou had appeared. At which point they’d found us. Mudge showed me missiles fired over the planetary horizon, fighters trying to reach a firing point from higher and lower orbits. The Tetsuo Chou had taken some hits but in the end its speed carried the day and it managed to reach a safe distance to set sail.
I’d missed the ballet and the bright lights in the night. I’d missed the old near-dead red star and looking down on that huge stinking planet one last time. I’d missed fucking nothing.
I was staring at Morag as Black Annis. She was aware of it. Everyone else was aware of it. Even Cronin was aware of it and this was his debrief. For debrief read interrogation.
Rolleston and Josephine Bran had survived. Of course they had. They couldn’t be killed, it seemed, even if lava seemed a pretty final way to deal with a disagreement. Salem’s people had got eyes on both of them in Moa City after Morag had turned the Citadel to steam.
‘We got you off the planet; now tell us what you know,’ Black Annis said, trying to ignore me, her voice like stones being ground together.
‘I need some kind of guarantee, a deal, one you’re not empowered to make,’ Cronin said. Apparently he was much calmer now. His calmness was increasing in direct proportion to his distance away from Rolleston.
‘Dude, you know we can get this out of you if we want – it won’t even take us that long,’ Mudge said reasonably. He was smoking a virtual cigarette. That seemed even more pointless than virtual whisky. Still it did look tasty.
‘Oh, I don’t think so, Mr Mudgie,’ Cronin said with just a trace of smugness.
I was irritated to see him wearing a high-quality expressive icon made by Morag. He looked now as we had seen him when we discussed democracy on a system-wide broadcast after we’d released God onto the net. Dapper, well dressed, handsome and shrewd – in short everything the high-flying corporate exec should be. According to Pagan, the higher spec the icon, the easier to gauge the subject’s responses in interrogation. ‘You’re the good guys. I don’t think you’ll torture me.’
The smugness in his tone was enough to distract me from staring at Annis’s horrible blue-skinned visage.
‘Arsehole, everyone here wants to kill you,’ I told him. ‘I’d cooperate.’
‘You kill me, you’ll learn nothing.’
‘We’ve already raided your isolated system,’ Annis growled. Cronin’s head snapped around to look at her. Pagan turned to her, Merle was positively glaring at her, and even Rannu was shaking his head.
‘Bullshit. Demiurge would have enslaved you at best,’ he said, but he sounded unsure. He was good enough at his job to read our body language, even in here, and would know by our reactions that we were telling the truth. Then a smile spread over his face. I hadn’t been expecting that. It looked like hope.
‘I don’t see why you’re smiling,’ Annis said. ‘We know everything we need to about the attack.’
‘You’re going to have to buy your life,’ Rannu told him. It sounded pretty serious coming from the Ghurkha.
‘I’m afraid your masters will disagree. I am far too valuable to them. They will want to make a deal.’
‘You see any of them here?’ Mudge asked as he looked around the great hall. I could hear him getting angry. ‘I don’t think we have masters. I think we have people we work with, and I would have thought you more than anyone would know that we are very bad at doing what we’re told.’
‘I hadn’t credited you with stupidity, Mr Mudgie-’
‘You’ve never dated him.’ I would have thought that Merle was joking except for the deadpan delivery. What was more interesting, Cronin would not look at him.
‘Whether you like it or not, I have more useful intel and insight on the situation than anything you could get from Demiurge,’ Cronin told us.
‘How? Isn’t Demiurge omniscient?’ Pagan asked.
‘You know that the Earth authorities will need to deal with me.’
‘They will just torture the info out of you,’ Annis said.
I didn’t believe that, and I could tell most of the others in the room felt the same way. They’d make a deal. Cronin would disappear and someone with a new face would be welcomed back into the powerbroker fold.
‘He’s right. We have no choice but to run him through interrogation sense programs and kill him before we get to Earth,’ I said grimly.
‘I don’t think you could do that, Mr Douglas,’ Cronin said.
‘I’ve tortured and killed better men than you for information, Cronin. You may think yourself pretty important but to me you’re just another arsehole, and if you don’t think I’ll torture you then you clearly have no idea what we went through when you guys captured us,’ I told him.
Rannu was nodding. His face was cold and emotionless. I was pretty sure that he wanted to hurt this man as much as I did. To an extent Cronin was right – I didn’t want to torture him because I didn’t like to think of myself as that sort of person, but I would if I had to. I wouldn’t lose much sleep either.
‘You remember me, don’t you, Cronin?’ Merle said. Cronin’s icon blanched. ‘Well, you know what I was capable of on a job. Now imagine I’m angry because my sister got killed. Now imagine that I hold you at least partially responsible for that.’
‘That wasn’t me! That was Rolleston! I’m telling you, he’s sick! He’s completely lost it! Same with the torture. It was all him!’ The boardroom polish was slipping. His Detroit street roots could be heard now.
‘Arsehole, there’s only one deal to make and it’s with us. And the only deal is that you make it to the end of this voyage,’ Mudge told him.
Cronin looked around at us all. I don’t think he liked what he saw.
‘You’re all fucking crazy. You’ve no idea what an asset I am,’ he said desperately.
‘Convince us,’ Mudge told him. ‘If you live long enough then you can make your deal when we get back.’
Like fuck, I thought.
Cronin had my attention now though I couldn’t stop looking over at Black Annis from time to time. She would never meet my eyes.
‘So you and Rolleston wanted to rule the world and now you’ve had a falling out?’ Mudge asked.
‘No. That wasn’t what we were going to do.’
‘Oh no, this is the next big step for humanity,’ I said acidly.
‘We evolve to slavery?’ Mudge asked.
Cronin looked pained. He had an expression on his face that suggested even if he explained it to us very carefully, using small words, we still wouldn’t get it.
‘Have you ever thought about the potential of each individual, even the dumbest, least ambitious and least imaginative? If nothing else they have huge potential for industry, potential vastly enhanced by our interface with technology. Then think about all the intelligent, ambitious, imaginative and hard-working members of the human race. Now imagine what we could accomplish if all of us pulled together. If we all locked step and moved forward trying to improve ourselves as a race, as a whole, instead of bickering and fighting over ultimately meaningless things. With the war we’ve seen what humanity can accomplish almost working together, the leaps in technology, the co-operation-’
‘The constant fucking misery,’ I added.
‘Now imagine we don’t require the stimulus of an external threat. Imagine every one of us is working together towards a common goal, the progress of us as a species. Imagine what we would accomplish.’
‘Is this how you sell totalitarianism to yourself?’ Mudge asked.
Cronin looked deeply frustrated. ‘How do you walk upright?’ he demanded.
‘We understand you. You’re not the smartest person in this room by a long shot,’ I snapped, angry at his patronising tone.
‘It’s not Jakob either,’ Mudge said, grinning.
