Be My Enemy Read Online Free PDF Page B

Charles Villiers finished. “Everett, this must be hard to hear, but in E10, your father completed his work. He has a fully operational map of the Panoply. With it, and a Heisenberg Gate, he can jump to any point in any world—even within a world, like the jump that took Mr. Portillo and me from London to here.”
    “You're talking about many Tejendra Singhs,” Everett M said. “You're not talking about many Everett M. Singhs.”
    Charles Villiers sat back, startled by the anger in Everett M's voice.
    “There is a danger that the map—the Infundibulum—may fall into the wrong hands.”
    Everett M shivered as cold air spiralled up from the depths of the pit. His arms were bare, his feet were bare, his clothes were light and thin, he understood nothing. He remembered what his dad had said, when you understand nothing, you ask questions. Why is there a pit ten kilometers deep on the Moon? What are all the windows for? Why are there balconies, why is there even any air? What does Madam Moon need air for? Why did Madam Moon, the Thryn Sentiency, need all of this, any of this? Was it just stage dressing, Hollywood movie CG, projected right into his brain? He didn't doubt that the Thryn could do that. And if they could do that…
    “Ask the Thryn Sentiency to give you another map,” Everett M asked. “They're thousands of years ahead of us, that's what everyone says. So why bring me here? Because they can't give you another map, can they?”
    Charles Villiers softly clapped his hands together in delight.
    “You are a very clever young man,” he said. He dipped his head to Madam Moon. She pressed her hands together in her half-greeting, half-blessing. “Humanity has been studying the Sentiency closely—probably more closely than anything else—for almost fifty years. Thryn technology is not thousands of years ahead. It's five, maybe four hundred years, at our current rate of technological development. And, all due respect to Madam Moon, the Thryn are not really a Sentiency at all. How can I explain this?”
    “You don't need to,” Everett M said. “I think I get this. They got enough technology to be able to build a machine that could reproduce their civilization. After that, they didn't need to invent anything. So they didn't.”
    “Clever, Everett, clever boy. The Thryn Sentiency is not really sentient in our understanding of the word—it's not self-aware. It doesn't have to be. It just has to work. We look at all this and think that there has to be a guiding mind behind it, but the reality is, it builds itself from simple, blind instructions. The Thryn Sentiency is more like an immense, complex, high-tech plant—a flower, a tree—than what we would call a civilization. Every Thryn Sentiency is a clone of the others. It reproduces itself perfectly, and that is why humanity will be greater than it. It allows no mistakes. Everything great about us comes from mistakes. Evolution has stopped for the Thryn Sentiency. Not for us. And that is why we will be greater than it in the end.”
    Everett M looked again at Madame Moon, her kind face, her folded hands, her patient expression, her eyes that, now that he knew what was behind them, were the deadest things he had ever seen.
    “We need you to be an agent, Everett,” Charles Villiers said. “A secret agent. James Bond. James Bond junior.”
    “Mr. Villiers, who is we ?”
    “The Plenitude. This world—our world. There are forces beyond the Known Worlds more powerful and more dangerous thanyou can imagine. Forces that make even the Thryn look puny. And there are forces inside the Plenitude as well. I've said too much already. Suffice to say, if they gain control of the Infundibulum, we are all in danger. Even your family, Everett; your friends, everyone you care about. We need you, Everett. Only you can do this.”
    They had him. He was on the Moon, alone, in the hands of one of world's most powerful men, a man to whom even the prime minister dipped his head, a