Echopraxia by Peter Watts Page B

dance; the window dwindled and slid to an empty spot along the edge of the wall. “They’re still setting up. We’ve got time.”
    â€œHow was the meeting?” Brüks asked.
    â€œStill going on. Not much point hanging around after the opening ceremonies, though. I’d just slow them down.”
    â€œAnd let me guess: you can’t tell me what’s going on, and it’s none of my business anyway.”
    â€œWhy would you say that?”
    â€œLianna said—”
    â€œDr. Lutterodt wasn’t at the meeting,” Moore reminded him.
    â€œOkay. So is there anything you can—”
    â€œThe Fireflies,” Moore said.
    Brüks blinked. “What about—oh. Your common enemy.”
    Moore nodded.
    Memories of intercepted negotiations, scrolling past in Christmas colors: “ Theseus . They found something out there?”
    â€œMaybe. Nothing’s certain yet, just—hints and inferences. No solid intel.”
    â€œStill.” An alien agency capable of simultaneously dropping sixty thousand surveillance probes into the atmosphere without warning. An agency that came and went in seconds, that caught the planet with its pants down and took God knew how many compromising pictures along God knew how many wavelengths before letting the atmosphere burn its own paparazzi down to a sprinkle of untraceable iron floating through the stratosphere. An agency never seen before and never since, for all the effort put into finding it. “I guess that qualifies as a common threat,” Brüks admitted.
    â€œI guess it does.” Moore turned back to his war wall.
    â€œWhy were they fighting in the first place? What does a vampire have against a bunch of monks?”
    Moore didn’t answer for a moment. Then: “It’s not personal, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
    â€œWhat, then?”
    Moore took a breath. “It’s—more of the same, really. Entropy, increasing. The Realists and their war on Heaven. The Nanohistomites over in Hokkaido. Islamabad on fire.”
    Brüks blinked. “Islamabad’s—”
    â€œOops. Getting ahead of myself. Give it time.” The Colonel shrugged. “I’m not trying to be coy, Dr. Brüks. You’re already in the soup, so I’ll tell you what I can so long as it doesn’t endanger you further. But you’re going to have to take a lot on—well, on faith.”
    Brüks stifled a laugh. Moore looked at him.
    â€œSorry,” Brüks said. “It’s just, you hear so much about the Bicamerals and their scientific breakthroughs and their quest for Truth. And I finally get inside this grand edifice and all I hear is Trust and God willing and Take it on faith . I mean, the whole order’s supposed to be founded on the search for knowledge, and Rule Number One is Don’t ask questions ?”
    â€œIt’s not that they don’t have answers,” Moore said after a moment. “It’s just that we can’t understand them for the most part. You could resort to analogies, I suppose. Force transhuman insights into human cookie-cutter shapes. But most of the time that would just get you a bleeding metaphor with all its bones broken.” He held up a hand, warding off Brüks’s rejoinder. “I know, I know: it can be frustrating as hell. But people have an unfortunate habit of assuming they understand the reality just because they understood the analogy. You dumb down brain surgery enough for a preschooler to think he understands it, the little tyke’s liable to grab a microwave scalpel and start cutting when no one’s looking.”
    â€œAnd yet.” Brüks glanced at the wall, where AEROSOL DELIVERY glowed in shades of yellow and orange. Where a murderous tornado had rampaged the night before. “They seem to solve their conflicts pretty much the same way as us retarded ol’ baselines.”
    Moore smiled