Carnival

Vincent listened to the water fall for thirty seconds, and then said, “Kyoto. She never got to say her piece at dinner.”

“The terrifying old battleaxe? What topic?”

“Biological determinism. Can you do it?”

“Right.” Michelangelo cleared his throat. “The only significant natural predator that human women have is heterosexual men. The Amazonian social structure, with its strictures on male activity, has nothing to do with masculine intelligence or capability.”

“Good.” Vincent started to key a toiletry license, and saw a bar of soap resting in a niche in the wall. “Do you suppose this soap is animal fat?”

“Probably,” Michelangelo said, dropping his cheerfully didactic voice of Advocacy. “How’s it smell?”

“Nice.” But Vincent, having sniffed, put it down again and ran his hand under the water until his skin tingled. “So if it’s not that men suffer under reduced capacity, what’s it about?”

“Biology. Self-defense. Reasonable precautions.”

“Keep going.”

“Traditionally, the responsibility for safety falls on the victim. Women are expected to defend themselves from predators. To act like responsible prey. Limit risks, not take chances. Not to go out alone at night. Not talk to strange men. Rely on their own, presumably domesticated men for protection from other feral men—in exchange for granting them property rights over the women in question.” He laughed. “How’s that?”

“And the New Amazonian system is superior in what way?”

“Punishes the potential predator and arms the potential victim. If men cannot control themselves, control will be instituted. Potential predators are caged, regulated.”

“But?”

Michelangelo fell silent again. Vincent heard the splash of water, the rustle of the towels. “What do I think, or what would Elder Kyoto say?”

“Kyoto.”

“It could have happened centuries ago, but women were soft,” Michelangelo said. “Too soft for revolution. Too willing to believe the best of men. Unwilling to punish all for the sins of many, so they took that onus on themselves, and endured the risks. And a certain percentage of human males acted the way some males of most species will act: infanticide, rape, kidnapping, and the general treatment of females as chattel.”

“And what do youthink?”

More quiet. The water cut off.

Vincent ducked his head out of the shower without rinsing the soap from his hair. “Angelo?”

Michelangelo was leaned against the wall, palms on either side of the mirror, inspecting the whites of his eyes. He turned around and set his backside on the basin between pale-knuckled hands. “Think we’re all prey. And all predators, given half a chance. What about you?”

After a certain amount of trouble, Kii accesses the spaceship. Timeslip reveals emergent properties; the ship is namedKaiwo Maru, andKaiwo Maru will have been important to the resolution, eventually. The threads lead through her, swirl around her. They are altered when they cross her path, and tumble away in alien directions.

They are altered since the moment she arrived, and Kii understands the implications. This is a cusp. There are others such, that are collapsed. There will have been others again.

The Consent is that Kii examineKaiwo Maru . She uses a simple quantum computing engine, Bose-Einstein condensates similar to the ones implanted in the encroaching bipeds. She is constructed of modular units, foglets, and is transfinitely adaptable.

And she is aware.

Kii is at first excited to find that she hosts consciousness. There’s more here than Kii has understood; the bipeds are more advanced than Kii could have realized.

But Kii comes to understand that the consciousnesses she hosts are problematic. They are intelligent, focused,with a developed and balanced value system. They are disinterested.