Cara frowned. Even that had a moment of extra processing that went into it. Like the girl, or the thing that had been a girl, needed to remember how to make movement first. Or maybe it was more like a kind of gross motor stutter. Elvi really needed to get back to that line of research at some point . . .
“It does . . . record?” Cara said. “That’s not the right word. It’s not like memory, exactly. It’s more like everything all at once? Like the way a film is all the pictures that tell the story, and they’re all there even when you only see one at a time? I’m not explaining this right.”
“A gestalt,” Elvi said.
“I don’t know that word,” the girl said.
Her hand terminal chimed at the same moment that Cortázar’s system threw an alert on his monitor. Trejo informing them of an emergency meeting in his offices in half an hour.
“Problem?” Cara asked.
“Too many masters, not enough time,” Elvi said. “I’ll be back when I can.”
Cortázar was already heading for the door. She had to trot to catch up. A driver waited for them outside, managing to look obsequious and impatient at the same time. A cold wind was blowing in from the east, stinging Elvi’s earlobes. It was her first winter on Laconia, and she understood it was likely to get a lot colder for a very long time before the warmth came back.
In the back of the car, Cortázar folded his arms and scowled out the window. The city was glittering, and there were banners up for some kind of cultural celebration. Elvi didn’t know what it was. The streets they passed had people rushing down them in thick coats. A pair of young men ran alongside their car for a moment, hand in hand and laughing, before a security guard in Laconian blue waved them off.
It was hard for her to remember that a whole population—millions of people—was spread across the planet, living lives in a new environment while she tired her head in reams of data. In that, it felt a lot like pretty much every other city she’d spent time near.
“I heard you talking to the older subject,” Cortázar said.
“Right?” Elvi said. “This is awesome.” She lowered her voice, roughened it, and put on a fake Martian accent. “We thought it was two cases, but it’s been the same case all along.” Then, when Cortázar didn’t respond. “Like Inspector Bilguun? How he and Dorothy were always on different investigations, and it turned out they were related?”
“I never watched those,” Cortázar said. “I’m concerned about how you’re treating the subjects.”
“Cara and Xan?”
“You treat them like they’re people,” Cortázar said. “They aren’t.”
“They aren’t rats. I’ve worked with rats. They’re very different.” Again, he didn’t get the joke. Or didn’t think it was funny.
“They are mechanisms created from the corpses of children. They do some things that the children did because those are the parts that the repair drones had to work with. Eros was only different in scale. The nature of the protomolecule and all the technology related to it has the same logic. On Eros, when it wanted a pump, it co-opted a heart. When it needed tools to manipulate something, it repurposed a hand. This isn’t different. Cara and Alexander died, and the drones made something out of the dead flesh. When you talk to that girl, she isn’t there. Something is, maybe. And it’s made from parts of a human, the way I could stitch together a model catapult from chicken bones. You’re anthropomorphizing them.”
“Is it a problem?”
“It’s inaccurate,” Cortázar said. “That’s all.”
At the State Building, an escort led them to a conference room where Trejo and Ilich were already sitting. Ilich looked worse than usual, and the way things were, that was saying something. Trejo, on the other hand, seemed almost at ease. He gestured at the chairs, and Elvi and Cortázar sat. A display on the wall showed a map of the system—sun, planets, moons, and ships—like a virtual orrery. It seemed to her like it had a lot of ships in it.
“The research?” Trejo asked curtly. “Where do we stand?”
“Making progress. Steady progress,” Cortázar said.
“Do you concur, Major Okoye?”
“We’re finding new connections,” she said. “You don’t really know what’s critical and what’s just nifty until after the fact, but sure. Progress.”
“We’ve had a development,” Trejo said.
“What’s up?” Elvi asked.
That was how she learned that the underground had launched a full-scale invasion. Trejo brought them up to speed as quickly as he could, then opened the floor to comment.
“The thing I care about,” Ilich said, “is what they know that we don’t. That’s why this is a problem.”
“I understand your concern,” Trejo said, one palm up as if to say, Please stop whining.
“First, they all saw the Tempest stand up to their fleet. They knew what it was capable of. And we saw them destroy the same unkillable ship. We don’t know what else they’re capable of.”
“The readings from Sol are consistent with the full complement of antimatter resupply we sent having been used,” Cortázar said.
“And there isn’t any more missing,” Trejo said. “All that still exists is either being isolated on the construction platforms or was shipped to bomb ships in other systems. It’s possible that they’ve been appropriated by the enemy since the loss of the Typhoon, but we haven’t heard of any that have gone missing.”
“So if it’s not that,” Ilich said, “then what is up their sleeve that they’re willing to throw three hundred—”
“Four hundred,” Trejo said. “More came through.”
“Four hundred ships at us? Because unless they’ve all suddenly become suicidal, we have to assume they know something.”
Elvi tended to agree with Ilich’s point, if not with his tone. She also understood why Trejo seemed more at ease. After all the alien strangeness and political intrigue, a nice simple shooting war was a move back into his comfort zone. Not into hers, though.
“You let me worry about that,” Trejo said. “I’ve already been in touch with Admiral Gujarat. The Whirlwind’s still not at a hundred percent readiness, but she’s comfortable taking it out so long as it stays in-system. I have no interest in putting our last Magnetar through the gates anyway. We’re ready for this. What we aren’t ready for is the high consul’s silence.”
“Would seem strange,” Cortázar said.
“Leading a secret task force focused on the things that killed Medina is plausible,” Trejo said. “Reassuring, even. Staying silent in the face of an invasion is not. We need his face on this. No options.”
“I’m not sure how we do that,” Elvi said. “He hasn’t had a really lucid moment since—”
“We make it,” Trejo said. “I understand that this is a little below your collective pay grade, but I’m not interested in bringing a media team into the fold. We’ll scan the high consul, get recordings of his voice, and generate a message to enemy and empire. You have some experience with imaging, yes?”
“I’ve run a bunch of animals through sampling pouches,” Elvi said. “It’s not really the same thing.”
“We can make it work,” Ilich said.
“Good,” Trejo said, and stood. For a moment, Elvi thought the meeting was adjourned and started to head for the door herself. “Dr. Okoye. We’re not waiting on this. We’re doing it now.”
The scanning device wasn’t particularly bulky, but Duarte’s room wasn’t built for it. Kelly had dressed the high consul in his formal uniform and was helping him to his chair. The thought, as Elvi understood it, was that if they scanned the uniform into the same profile as the man, creating the false version would be simpler.
“There are going to be forensic traces,” Cortázar said. “There always are.”
“We have very good imaging programs,” Trejo said as he tried to fit the lighting stick into its base.
“Other people do too,” Cortázar said. “I’m not objecting to the plan. Just be prepared to discredit the people who say it’s faked.”
“Already on that,” Trejo said, and stood. The lighting stick cycled through its spectrum, getting ready to catch the subtleties of Winston Duarte’s skin and hair. He’d grown thinner since the break. His eyes still had an intelligence to them if not a focus, but his cheekbones had become more prominent. Elvi felt like she could see the skull beneath the skin, and she didn’t remember thinking that before. Kelly brushed his hair, trying to put it into place the way he probably had before other addresses and announcements. Only Duarte wouldn’t keep still. His hands were thinner, gray and dusty-looking, and he moved them constantly. His eyes rolled in his head like he was following butterflies no one else could see.
“Is there any way to make him sit still for a minute?” Trejo asked.