“That’s deep stuff for his age.”
“Well, he’s interested in it.”
A long silence again. This time, she broke it. “Are you sure everything’s okay?”
“No. But I’ve got to go, Sis. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
SILAS HATED cocktail parties. He hated the clink of glass on teeth. He hated the food, served in twists of color on white china, more aesthetic than edible. Most of all, he hated the smiles.
It was after ten now, and the party was in full swing. Silas had come straight from his room when he’d gotten off the phone. He scanned the crowd.
The guests stood in loosely shifting clusters around the room, as homogeneous in their affluence as they were diverse in every other conceivable way. They were Congolese, and Canadian, and German, and Indonesian, and three dozen other nationalities, all of them patting one another on the back, trading the same stories back and forth, laughing at each other’s jokes—and all of them training their glossy smiles on him as he passed through the crowd. They came from points around the world, the people in this crowd, but really they all came from money. That was their ethnic group.
The members of this crowd didn’t point—they were too sophisticated for that—but all had smiles for him. He knew their type well, knew they were excited by their opportunity to brag of being at a party where Silas Williams was present.
Silas wasn’t exactly dressed for the occasion. He still wore the casuals he’d had on for the neural relaxer appointment earlier in the evening, and the gray sweats stood out in sharp relief against the angular penguin suits of the other men. It didn’t really matter, though. They probably thought he was making a fashion statement. Among the ladies, low necklines were apparently in style this season, and necklaces of pearl and diamond bobbled across the tops of the women’s breasts while they bantered with their power dates.
The vise on his head had finally begun to ease its grip somewhat, and now the pain had subsided to a kind of dull, throbbing ache at his temples. “Toxins” aside, he had to admit he’d been a little nervous there for a while. He didn’t know what a brain aneurysm felt like, but it couldn’t feel much worse than the headache he was finally climbing out from under.
He turned sideways, sliding between several groups of people that had gathered near the enormous window that comprised the larger portion of the south-facing wall. Beyond the glass, the sky was blank. There were no stars hanging in the distance, only the lights of cars, and buildings, and glowing neon signs that spread below in a carpet of illumination. Standing alone, looking out into that inverted sky, was Baskov.
The old man didn’t look happy to see him. “How nice of you to join us,” he said. “I was afraid an oversight may have left you without an invitation.”
“I never got an invitation,” Silas said. “I’m here to see you.”
“Consider me at your service. What can I do for you?”
Silas decided to take the direct approach. “The gladiator can understand spoken words.”
Baskov’s eyes skipped toward the crowd and back again. People were taking notice of the conversation. Baskov turned toward the glass, casting Silas a look that bid him do the same.
“So does my cat,” Baskov said softly. “So what?”
“I’d bet a thousand dollars you don’t have a cat.”
“That’s quite beside the point.”
“It’s not just simple commands. I think this thing understands English, or at least bits and pieces. It understands how the word ‘don’t’ modifies a verb, and that implies an understanding of grammar.”
“What the hell are you talking about? It doesn’t imply anything. What do you want, Dr. Williams? Really?”
“I want you to reconsider using the gladiator in competition.”
“This again? Now?”
“This isn’t some animal we trained to understand commands. Whatever this thing knows, it’s picked up on its own. Do you understand what that means? This thing either is smart enough to learn English just by listening to it or has some kind of hardwired grammar—but either way, we’re going to throw it in the pit tomorrow with a bunch of animals.”
Baskov smiled. “You’re talking about sentience.”
“That’s a word that has lost some of its meaning over the last few decades.”
“In no small part due to your
“There are shades of gray. But yes, I think we need to at least investigate the possibility. There’s a point past which we can’t just throw a being to the wolves.”
“So now it’s a being?”
“I don’t know what it is. I never did.”
Baskov turned toward the window again and took a deep breath. He was silent for a moment, then leaned closer to the glass, looking down. “Do you see the protesters down there?”
Silas didn’t bother to look. “I saw them when I arrived.”
“There are more of them at every new competition. I can see them from here. They wave their signs at the cameras and yell for the traffic to honk their horns. They want us shut down, but they have no problem at all accepting the benefits that come from research directly linked to the program. You never hear of them refusing a gene therapy procedure on moral grounds if it is going to save their lives.”
“I’m not one of your contributors, and this isn’t a sponsor event. I’ve heard this all before.”
“So what would you have me do, hmm?” Baskov turned to face him, and there was anger in his pale blue eyes. “Call the whole thing off? Tell everybody to just go home?”
“I told you before. Withdraw. The world will go on.”
“And I told you before that if you were unwilling to deal with the realities of the situation, then you would be replaced.”
“Realities of the situation? That’s a joke. This isn’t reality; it’s the twisted dream of a computer nobody can even see.”
“Then it’s a dream you may find yourself waking from very soon.”
“You can’t honestly think you’re threatening me? You do.” Silas stopped himself from laughing but couldn’t filter the mirth from his voice. “You greatly overestimate my attachment to this job.”
Baskov threw a furtive glance toward the audience that had slowly and subtly begun to gather around them. Silas had noticed them, too. They weren’t staring, weren’t crowding too close, but nevertheless, they were there, watching in sidelong glances from the corners of their eyes, drinking it all in from a respectable distance. Their conversations were pitched low and moved in a conspicuous rhythm, voices dropping off when Silas or Baskov spoke.
“You greatly overestimate my patience for impudence,” Baskov softly responded.
“If you can’t tell the difference between impudence and common sense,” Silas said, voice rising, “then you’re as addled as the man you put in charge of design.” He no longer cared who watched. Let them gawk. Whose reputation was he trying to protect, anyway?
“You forget yourself, Dr. Williams. If I hear one more word of dissent, one more single word, then your career is over. I won’t hesitate. The choice is yours.”
Silas leaned forward. “Fuck you.”
He was pleased to see not a single glossy smile pointed at him on the way out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Silas opened his eyes to bright sunlight pouring through the window of his hotel suite. Vidonia was already gone. His arms wandered across her side of the rumpled bed, and it was still warm. The pillow still cupped the delicate negative of her head.
“Vidonia?” he called.
