“But something, some sort of compound mind is really there, Nara? Even on an Imperial world, with emergence suppressed? Even without the networks.”

She nodded. “I heard it every day. Had it in my mind. Whether computers make it apparent or not, humans are a part of something bigger, something distinctly alive. The Rix are right about that.”

“Thus the Emperor protects us,” Zai whispered.

“Yes. Our counter-god,” Oxham said sadly. “A necessary…stopgap.”

“But why not, Nara? You said it yourself, we need human personalities. People who inspire loyalty, give human shape to the mass. So why fight the Emperor so bitterly?”

“Because no one elected him,” she said. “And because he’s dead.”

Zai shook his head, the disloyal words painful.

“But the honored dead chose him at Quorum, sixteen hundred years ago. They can call another Quorum to remove him, if they ever wanted to.”

“The dead are dead, Laurent. They don’t live with us anymore. You’ve seen the distance in their eyes. They are no more like us than Rix minds. You know it. The living city may be a beast, but at least it’s human: what we are.”

She leaned toward him, the fire bright in her eyes.

“Humanity is central, Laurent, the only thing that matters. We are what puts good and evil in this universe. Not gods or dead people. Not machines. Us.”

“The honored dead are our ancestors, Nara,” he whispered fiercely, as if silencing a child in church.

“They’re a medical procedure. One with unbelievably negative social and economic consequences. Nothing more.”

“That’s insane,” he said.

He closed his mouth on the words, too late.

She stared back at him, triumph and sadness on her face.

They sat there for a while longer, the thing that had been between them broken. Laurent Zai wanted to say something, but doubted an apology would matter.

He sat in silence, wondering what he should do.

3

Decompression

Swift decisions are virtuous, unless they have irrevocable consequences.

—ANONYMOUS 167

Senator

The constellation of eyes glistened, reflecting the sunlight that penetrated the cultured-diamond doors sliding closed behind Senator Nara Oxham. The ocular glint raised her hackles, marking as it did the eyes of a nocturnal predator. On Oxham’s home planet Vasthold, there ranged human-hunting bears, paracoyotes, and feral night-dogs. On some deep, instinctive level, Nara Oxham knew those eyes to be warnings.