“All right,” Trejo said.
“There’s no reason to believe that a brain is the only structure capable of having that combination of structure and energy. And in fact, there’s a fair amount of evidence that the gate builders had a conscious structure—a brain-like thing—where the material component wasn’t at all the same kind of thing we use. Anecdotally, we’ve found at least one brain-like structure that was a diamond the size of Jupiter.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Trejo said.
“Like we don’t have a steel chamber in fusion reactors. We have magnetic bottles. Magnetic fields that perform the same basic function as matter. The older civilization appears to have developed its consciousness in a form that relied more on energetic fields and maybe structures in unobservable matter than the stuff we made a brain from. There’s also some implication that quantum effects have something to do with our being aware. If that’s true for us, it was probably true for them.
“My thesis—the one I was working on before I came here—explored the idea that our brains are kind of a field combat version of consciousness. Not too complex. Not a lot of bells and whistles, but takes a lot of punishment and keeps functioning. Our brain may actually have a kick-starting effect, so when the quantum interactions that underlie having experiences break down, they’re easier to start up again. Does that make sense?”
Trejo said Barely at the same time Cortázar said Of course. The two men looked at each other. Elvi felt annoyed at both of them, but she went on.
“So, the scenario that James Holden brought back from the alien station in the ring space was of something systematically destroying the consciousness of the older civilization. Killing it. The previous civilization tried getting rid of systems. Inducing supernovas. That didn’t help. They eventually closed all the gates, and that didn’t fix the problem either, because whatever it was killed them all anyway.
“And that’s where we came in. We found—and I have directly observed—things that we call bullets or scars or persistent nonlocal field effects. Basically a place where whatever hates the ring gates has done something to collapse consciousness on a planet or in a system. Or in all the systems at once. What I suspect—and I don’t have any data for this—is that the enemy figured out how to snuff out all the systems at once, whether the gates were active or not. I believe that our travel through the gates is irritating to these beings. Maybe even damaging in some way. When that damage gets high enough, they react.”
“So when I killed Pallas Station in Sol . . . ,” Trejo said.
“You also hit some weird, aphysical dark god in whatever passes for its nose,” Elvi said. “And they did what you’d expect them to do. If you get sick and a penicillin shot makes you better, then the next time you get sick, you try another shot. Only it turns out we aren’t the same kind of conscious system as the gate makers. We don’t break as easy, and we recover better. What slaughtered their civilization just lost us a few minutes of time.”
“How disappointing for the dark gods,” Trejo said.
“Right? But then they’re not done. Especially, and no offense here, when we start dropping bomb ships into wherever they are. Playing tit for tat. And the way this one felt different? Light and shapes instead of that kind of hyperawareness?”
“I did notice that, yes,” Trejo said dryly.
“I believe that the enemy, whatever it is, is experimenting with new ways to break conscious systems. Brains. I think we’re the equivalent of a penicillin-resistant infection, and the last event we experienced was an attempt at tetracycline.”
“And the trigger?” Trejo asked.
“There doesn’t need to be a trigger,” Elvi said, “if the enemy has gone past being purely reactive. Maybe we just convinced them to take us seriously.”
Trejo sank a little as the implications unfolded in his mind.
“Is this new information?” Cortázar said. “I feel we’ve covered this all before. I mean, nothing in this is really new, is it?”
Trejo and Ilich exchanged a look.
“It’s useful to me,” Trejo said, “to have Dr. Okoye’s summary. So yes. Do we have any progress on healing the high consul?”
“It would be helpful,” Cortázar said, “if I could examine Ilich’s castoff. I don’t suppose there’s been any new word on finding it?”
Trejo’s effort to hold his temper was visible. “Before we move on to that, if we could address the health of the high consul?”
“He’s stable,” Cortázar said. “Very stable. Perfectly fine.”
“Improving?”
“No.”
Ilich broke in, his voice tense. “Is there no way we can get him back?”
Elvi wasn’t going to let Cortázar bullshit this one anymore. Either he had a plan he’d been holding back for his own reasons or he didn’t. She leaned forward and put her hands on the desk, palms down, like she was revealing a hand at a poker table. “I don’t see any realistic path toward returning him to his previous state.”
Trejo nodded to her and shifted to Cortázar. “Do you disagree?”
Cortázar squirmed. “His previous state? Probably not. But moving him forward into a new state is much more plausible. Easy, even. And more than that, instructive.”
Trejo went terribly still. A soft tapping came at the door, and the servant came in with Elvi’s snack. She’d forgotten all about it. When the door was closed again and privacy restored, Trejo hadn’t moved. His eyes weren’t focused on anything in the room, and his skin was pale. It took Elvi a moment to understand what she was seeing.
All this time, Trejo had hoped. He’d believed that his leader would return, that the righteous king would rise and retake his throne. Despite everything Elvi had said, the admiral had believed Cortázar could Merlin his Arthur back from madness. She was watching Trejo realize he had just been letting someone play with the corpse. She was someplace between horrified for him and relieved that he’d finally heard what she’d been saying all along.
“All right,” Trejo said. And then again, more slowly, “All right. The high consul is going to have to make a statement all the same. We’ll draft something.”
“We can say that the event was a test,” Ilich said. “The high consul’s elite team has made a breakthrough. A new weapon against the enemy.”
“Or we could tell them the truth,” Elvi said.
Trejo stood, his hands clasped behind his back. The anger and irrationality in his expression were grief. Grief made people crazy. When he spoke, his voice buzzed with barely controlled rage. Not at Cortázar either. At her.
“I don’t think you understand exactly how precarious our situation is here, Dr. Okoye. I have a two-front war with no fronts. This is not a moment to undermine and degrade the confidence of our troops or embolden separatist terror. You have just outlined war on a cosmic scale. I can’t prosecute a battle against your dark gods while guerrillas degrade our forces. We have to unify humanity for this. We have to strike with one will. We can’t afford to fuck around knocking each other’s comm relays down anymore. That is going to get us all killed. Do you hear what I am saying?”
“I do,” Elvi said, and she was surprised by the steel in her own voice. Trejo heard it too. “I’m hearing you say you can’t handle this. You want the fight with the underground over with? Easy to do. Surrender.”
“Your jokes aren’t funny,” he said.
“They aren’t when they’re not jokes.”
Chapter Forty: Teresa
Every night she went to sleep, Teresa thought that maybe the next day would be the one that brought her father back. Like with the story of Pandora’s box, all the other fears and nightmares were made bearable by that one hope. Every morning that she woke, there was that sense of possibility that stayed bright as long as she could keep herself from checking in. And then Kelly, her father’s personal valet, would tell her that nothing had changed because of course it hadn’t. She’d feel let down again, and still, idiotically, stupidly, like a cartoon character with an empty grin, the thought would come up. Maybe tomorrow. Always maybe tomorrow.