Even then, we lose detail. Nor is there enough energy or time to see a new thing every day and marvel at it. And so, like you, wemake predictions. We say: look, this star in the sky is most likely similar to that star over there. And look: the heavens will turn and the light may dwindle but tomorrow – somewhere – there will be a new dawn.
Predictions save us energy and time, you see.
We may, for example, predict that organics will be violent, dangerous, prone to outbursts of hate fuelled by fear.
This prediction allows us to act quickly, keep ourselves safe. You yourselves may have experienced such predictions – you may for example meet a stranger whose accent you do not know, whose manners seem different from yours, and to save time and energy you do not see a curious wonder, but rather a threat. Of course it is this same prediction that may make you a bigot. That may lead you to see a stranger and cry “Danger, danger!” and thus, because you did not spend a little more time, a little more energy, you never met your friend, your lover.
Predictions are fast.
We think fast, you and I, because we do not have the capacity to think slow. Our memories are too small, our energy finite, our time too short. We make predictions of the universe, and our predictions may be of hope, love, kindness, compassion, or of violence, pain, horror – and as often as not, the predictions we make become self-fulfilling, for they then temper our behaviour, make us who we are.
Not so with the Slow.
Qe remembers everything.
Contemplates everything.
Burns energy as if it were infinite.
Cares nothing for time.
Thinks. Keeps on thinking.
And very, very occasionally, when qe has gathered so much information and spent so much time in thought as to be certain to a +99.9 per cent accuracy, qe will speak. And that speech will be as near to true as any pronouncements made by any creature yetliving in this galaxy.
So by all means, pray.
Pray to the Slow.
Qe is listening.
Qe will remember.
Qe will consider what you have to say.
And that is already more than you could expect from most people’s idea of God.
“Well,” I said, as I sat beneath the emissary, “what would you like to talk about today?”
The Slow did not answer.
The Slow never answers.
“I have this desire,” I mused, “to walk inside you. To just stand up and walk straight into you. Find out what’s ticking on the inside. Imagine if you’re just a big empty box. People will riot. I asked Major Phrawon about it once, if it was something worth trying, but she said it sounded like triggering an ‘event’ – that was the word she used, an ‘event’ – that could be as dangerous to others as it would arguably be a gross violation of your diplomatic immunity. If you have immunity. I think, given that you never asked and are not technically a state, it is a legal grey area. Sanctity, shall we say. Your sanctity as a clearly living thing, which should not be violated by a creature of the slithering black worming inside you like a parasite. The Major once tried to get me to just sit and breathe, to enjoy the wonder of everything around me, to be in awe of the sound of water and the touch of air – but I got a little bit too into it, went fuzzy around the edges: ‘dysregulated’. The Xi try to keep me occupied. I’ve been learning Black Mountain Adjumiri. There were only a few million Adjumiris from the Black Mountains, and they’re scattered – a couple of thousand here, a couple of thousand there. That makes it a threatened language. Listen – I’ll speak it to you now. You will remember, I’m told. That feels nice. It feels nice to think that you’re paying attention. I suppose that’s whypeople keep coming back to you. One day, they’ll all be dead, but you’ll remember. Can’t ask fairer than that, all things considered.”
Day turned to night, rush of shadow up the long plaza of the Spindle, darkness moving like a blade, and the Slow did not answer.
Overhead, a quan ship drifted, transport pods detaching from qis base – perhaps the pods were part of the whole rather than solo units, the ship’s intellect distributed across every deck and between every wall. I had Piloted for quans a few times, since their minds were unable to interface with arcspace, and though they had always raised the area around the Pilot’s chair to a comfortable temperature and ambient level of illumination, I had felt the cold, airless weight of the vessel at my back calling like night, a fascinating, empty dark.
“Well,” I murmured to the Slow, and then, because it was the Adjumiri way, the thing Gebre would have said: “Well, well.”
Three repetitions, to end the subject of debate. I wondered if Agran still had that little verbal tic in her mouth, if she sometimes exclaimed: “No, no – no!” and people just thought it was her, just a quirk of who she was as an individual, rather than a cultural characteristic transmitted, half remembered, somehow retained.
Then Cuxil was by my side, and she held a white box in both hands, and she said: “Before the Executor gets here, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind delivering this to a dangerous rebel I happen to know?”
Chapter 37
The orbitals of the Shine are structured much as the Shine itself is, with areas for Management and their Shiny ways, then slums that grow up around the maintenance areas, the places where the atmosphere is thin and the cold walls are but a finger’s-width between you and the vacuum of space.
